Black Hat
by steamfan
Summary: It isn't often that someone who knows about the supernatural world doesn't know who The Sister is, but Dawn's not above taking advantage when she meets someone who doesn't.
1. Chapter 1

The dance floor was full of dancing young women, most of them too young to be in the mixed species club, but the owner wasn't stupid enough to think that any of his demonic bouncers could keep a single Slayer out, much less an entire group of them. He leaned out on the rail of the balcony above the dance floor and muttered to himself, "They'd better not be serving the Slayers alcohol or I'm going to turn them into dinner for you." His eyes flashed gold under his black, wide brimmed had. "Frankie knows that and we've got lots of fruit juice, lemonade, and soda for them. I had them stock up after the girls started to come in. They drank us dry the first night." A set of bright fangs flashed in the man's grin.

The flashes of eye and fang quickly disappeared as all of the Slayers lifted their heads and looked around for the vampire they sensed. They went back to dancing after a moment, but the man thought that they were getting a bit irritated at the here and gone again sense that he was giving them. "It's bad enough that you have to hide when they're around," the man grumbled. "How are we supposed to hunt when they're here all the time?" "I think that's the idea," he answered his own question. "They don't want us out there because they think we kill people." "If you tried it, you know what would happen." "Yeah, you'd puke," the man sighed, the argument long since argued out and dealt with.

Frankie, a human and the club's manager, was used to ignoring her employer's habit of arguing with himself, and referring to himself as two different people. She'd known he was crazy when she took the job and it paid very well in compensation. She finished walking up the steps to the balcony. "They brought in the Red Witch tonight as well as both senior Slayers." She watched as the man tensed, as if fighting a fight or flight reaction.

After a moment he turned to her. "Send them up." His ankle length leather coat swirled around him as he went to sit at the table at the back of the balcony. He set one boot on the table and draped his arms along the back of the bench. His head lowered to the point where it almost looked like he was sleeping. Frankie knew better. He had scared the living daylights out of most of the staff at one time or another with that pose. She shook her head and went to find the Resurrected Slayer and her group.

It was a serious group of young adults who walked up the stairs to greet the owner of the club. "Greetings to you Bright Slayer, Dark Slayer, Red Witch and White Knight," the owner said, his face hidden in the shadow of his hat. "I suspect that your errand here tonight is more than simply the fact that your young ladies have come to a club that they are technically too young for."

"Rumor has it you're nuts," the young man he'd called White Knight said bluntly.

The man sighed. "And you need to find out the truth behind the rumors," he said. "Actually I could almost wish that was the case. It would be easier to deal with my situation if I was crazy. Please sit." He gestured to the chairs scattered in front of the table. Buffy Summers, Faith Lehane, Willow Rosenberg and Xander Harris all sat down.

The man raised his head, showing them the scruffy face of a handsome man with dark hair and hazel eyes. "About thirty years ago I woke up on an altar. The entire area around it was pretty much devastated, covered in the remains of demons. I'm pretty sure that whoever it was that wrecked the party thought that I was dead and had left me there in order to go after whoever was responsible." He turned his hands, clad in black fingerless gloves, over in a shrug. "What I woke up to was no memory and a body that was no longer solely my own. We've been to several demonic doctors. As far as they could tell us, the mage somehow fused us together." He brought his hands together.

"We ended up with a case of physical multiple personality disorder. When I control our body, it's human. When my brother controls us, we are a vampire. This effect is permanent. We don't know who did it, why the mage did it, or how it was done. We have had to learn how to get along with each other." His eyes flashed gold and Buffy and Faith stiffened - the feeling that a slayer had when a vampire was nearby suddenly filling the room. "This means that we've had to find other ways to hunt since both of our needs must be met without causing harm to the other. My brother has a tendency to throw up if my blood is spiced with pain or death." His eyes changed back to their normal hazel. "And he has a tendency to get sick if I eat garlic. That's only one example of the adjustments we've had to make but I do believe it answers the question that you are most concerned about."

Buffy held up her hand. "Willow?" she asked.

The young woman known throughout the supernatural world as the Red Witch of Sunnydale had been watching the man from the moment she'd set foot on the balcony. "He's telling the truth. I can see both of them. They're just like Ben and Glory." She turned to the man. "So, if pain and death are out how do you hunt?"

The man suddenly smirked. "Freely given blood is much nicer and I certainly don't mind finding enough dates to keep him healthy." He was aware of who Glory had been. The Hellgoddess had made enough enemies that the news had swiftly made the rounds when she had fallen to the Bright Slayer and her Scoobies. He hadn't known that she had been like them, but at least the fact that the Bright Slayer and her people had known about Glory made it easier for them now.

Faith smirked right back at him. "You ever hook up with a Slayer?" the invitation was thick in her voice.

The man switched from human to vampire quickly. "Don't tempt him! I'm not that stupid even if he is. Damned humans and their hormones." "You're the one who's perpetually frustrated, not me." "Of course I'm frustrated, I can't even get a decent kill." "Killing off your food supply is a study in stupidity." "Only if you kill all of them," the vampire grumbled halfheartedly.

The back and forth switching between the two men living in the same body was rather entertaining, if confusing, but Buffy quickly put a stop to it as it was beginning to give her whiplash. "Listen, personally I don't care what your personal issues with each other are. I'm glad that you're not interested in world endage or going out on a killing spree. So that leaves just one thing. Why didn't you kick the mini slayers out? You're right about them being too young to be in here legally."

"I know that they can take care of themselves as long as they aren't drunk, and I don't allow my bartenders to serve them anything that might get them even the slightest bit drunk. I'm also not stupid enough to think that I could come out on top in a confrontation with the four of you. All I ask is that they don't bully my bouncers and don't trash my club."

"Deal," Buffy said and shook his hand. "They need a place to blow off steam."

A week later the man was back at the balcony watching the slayers dance again. This time it was not the slayers that had his attention, but a young woman that they'd brought with them. She was a magic user, a mage. They'd hated mages ever since they'd found out that one was responsible for sticking them together. He allowed his vampire brother to take over as they watched one of their employees bring the girl up.

Once her long brunette hair and clubbing make up, along with clothes to match would have been a delight to watch and to eat the vampire knew - back when they were separate. Neither of them had any memories of such a state, but they still knew some things that they had to have learned when they were separate people. As much as he wished for that state, the knowledge that it would never be possible again fed his anger as much as it fed his human brother's. "I agreed to allow slayers, not magic users," he growled.

"You let Willow in and I can take care of myself as well as any slayer," the girl said defiantly.

"I don't care. Only a fool pisses off the Red Witch or I wouldn't have let her in either," he snarled. "I want nothing to do with mages of any kind, not after what happened to us."

Immediately the girl's offended body language fell away, and sorrow took its place. "You're the Glory guy. Oh I am so sorry. No vampire should ever have to suffer something like that. It's terrible. Have you found a way to hunt at all? Don't tell me you're stuck with bottled blood," the girl chattered on. The vampire was so shocked that he took the metaphorical step back, turning their body over to his brother.

She didn't even seem to notice and continued to talk, her words coming so quickly that they were surprised that she didn't trip over any of them. "Here," she pulled out a small knife and made a small cut on the side of her hand. "Given blood is supposed to be stronger than taken and with my magic its even stronger, so just a little will be even better than a full meal." He just stared at her in amazement and she huffed a little in aggravation. "Come on, it won't hurt you and it will help him. It's not right that he's leashed, even if it is by you. Now get over here before it spills. We'll all be in trouble if that happens."

She had noticed, he realized and he knew that whatever trouble she was talking about was not something that either one of them wanted to have happen. "You are the only one who has ever taken his side," he said as he took her hand and lifted it to his mouth. "Thank you for that." He stepped aside for his brother, and the vampire drank the small amount of blood that was beginning to pool in her palm, licking the small cut closed. She tasted green and the rush the blood gave him was more than he anticipated, even with the extras she had mentioned. This one had to be a personal student of the Red Witch with as much power as she had.

The girl shrugged. "Honestly, it's mostly because of Spike. Did you hear about the Initiative?"

"Who moves in our circles that hasn't?" he asked. "Tales of humans torturing demons aren't that common."

She nodded. "Well, they put a computer chip in his head that caused him pain every time that he hurt a human. He babysat me when I was growing up for money to buy blood down at the local demon bar. He was, well…it was terrible to see what he was like before he found out that he could kill demons. He just, he'd lost so much of himself when he found out that he couldn't hurt humans anymore, not even to eat."

"And you felt sorry for him," the man concluded.

"He had become a friend," she said simply. "He taught me to shoot a crossbow and hotwire a car."

"What's your name mageling?" the man asked.

"I'm Dawn," she said, but she realized that he didn't recognize the name when he didn't react. "You don't know who I am, do you?"

The man cocked his head. "Should I?" he asked.

"My family is pretty well known," Dawn admitted. "If you don't mind, I'd rather take advantage of the fact that you don't know who I am. I don't have any friends who don't know, and to be honest none of them can be friends with just Dawn. People either try to take advantage, are too intimidated or just plain screw with me because of who I am."

The man actually smiled at that. "That makes a sort of karmic balance, because my brother and I don't know who we are either."

"What do you mean?" Dawn asked.

"Do you know what we told the Red Witch about how we came to be?" he asked as he guided her to the table at the back of the balcony.

"Yeah, it's a Glory deal, two people sharing one body space, and you don't know the who, how or why," Dawn said as she sat on the bench next to him.

"Yes, but we also don't have any memories going back before we woke up on that altar as we are," he told her as he relaxed on the bench. "That includes any names we might have had before we were made one."

"So what do people call you then?" Dawn asked, curious.

The vampire grinned. "People call us Black Jack."


	2. Chapter 2

Trying to sneak into the Cleveland slayer school just wasn't possible, but Dawn gave it her best shot. That being said, she wasn't surprised to find the reception she had waiting for her. "Where have you been?" Buffy demanded to know.

The entire Scooby Gang were all in the kitchen, some obviously having just gotten up for the day and others just coming in from the last patrol of the night. Xander was passing out cups of coffee while Andrew was beginning the heroic effort that it took to keep all of the students and staff fed. Giles was having his usual cup of tea. Dawn could see the end of his tea ball draped over the side of his mug. Willow and Tara (it had turned out that Sunnydale Hospital had a bad habit of reviving recently legally dead people who hadn't been completely dead and selling them to the highest bidder – and hadn't that been a struggle to keep Darth Willow from making an appearance) were huddled together at the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the dining room in robes and slippers. Buffy and Faith were standing next to Giles, covered in demon gore and vampire dust, which wasn't unusual for them coming in from patrol.

She really did not want to get into this with everyone watching, but it looked like she didn't have much choice. "I was out Buffy. You know, Friday night – go out and have fun?" Dawn asked.

"You ditched the mini slayers," Buffy growled. "You could have…"

"Been kidnapped, sacrificed, eaten, mugged, raped, and on and on and on," Dawn interrupted her sister. "I know the list Buffy, but I'm not fourteen anymore and it was Friday night, not Tuesday."

"The fact that you are eighteen doesn't mean that you can ignore the fact that you are in danger Dawn, or ignore the rules," Buffy scolded. "We're supposed to know where you are, even if it isn't Tuesday. You ditched the minis you promised to stay with!"

"I never left the club!" Dawn protested. "I met a guy and we talked all night, and none of you," she pointed around the room, "are going to talk to him, threaten him, or even look at him! He doesn't know who I am and just once I'd like to find out what it is like to have a guy like me or hate me because of me instead of you!" Buffy flinched at that, but Dawn didn't take it back. Far too many times slaying had gotten in the way of her having a life and as much as Buffy went on and on about Dawn having a normal life, she really needed to let her out long enough to have one.

"Are you sure he doesn't know who you are?" Willow asked skeptically. "That place is mixed you know, and not many people who go in there don't know about what goes bump." Tara nodded worriedly.

"He knows what goes bump, but he's only knows the main Scoobies and that's mostly through gossip," Dawn explained, putting her purse down on the counter. "He thinks that I'm one of Willow's students and a Watcher in Training."

"Hey! You're a Scooby too! Don't count yourself out," Xander scolded, waving his finger at her.

"Yeah, I know, I'm Scrappy, but he's totally old school. He might have heard that The Sister exists, but that's it," Dawn said as she was handed a plate with breakfast. "And can I say just how hard it was to not speak Scooby when talking about what goes grrr in the night? I slipped when I talked about Glory guy, but that was before I knew he didn't know."

"Are you tellin' me that you met a guy and all you did was talk all night?" Faith asked. "Girl, we got to get your priorities straight," she joked.

"FAITH!" Buffy squeaked.

"Relax Buffy, I'm not interested in jumping in the sack with anybody," Dawn promised her. "Even if it would keep about half my kidnappers from wanting me and leaving me with yet more reasons to hate bikini season." When Buffy looked puzzled she sighed. "Virgin sacrifice, ring a bell?" Leaving Buffy, and Giles from the frown on his face, to deal with that particular rock and a hard place, Dawn took her plate off to her room. She needed a shower and at least four hours of sleep before hitting her homework. She still had that Sumerian to Latin to English translation to get to.

Hours later

"Dawn, you up yet?" Willow asked, quietly knocking on her door. She didn't want to wake the Key turned human if she wasn't.

"Yeah, I'm up," Dawn called out, distractedly. She was neck deep in musty old tomes, several scrolls and the computer files that she kept for her own translations.

"Hey, I've got something for you," Willow said as she came into the room. Dawn's room was just as big as any of the rest of the Scoobies' suites, mostly because she had flat out refused to room with one of the baby slayers. The new slayers were divided up into four groups – the babies - ages thirteen to fifteen who were newly called, the minis – ages sixteen to seventeen, junior slayers – who were over eighteen and recently given their first Watchers and first assignments, and full slayers, who had their permanent Watchers and field assignments. "I've been working on a way for you to have a locator and a 911 button. I came up with this." She held out an amulet.

"You're lo-jacking me?" Dawn protested.

"No, it's more like Xander's 'My date is about to eat me, come slay her' code," Willow told her.

Dawn glared. "You're lo-jacking me. I'm never going to get rid of the virgin sacrifice deal."

Willow grinned. "I thought you weren't interested."

Dawn snorted. "Of course I'm interested, I just can't find a guy with all of you hanging over my shoulder and handing out shovel speeches at the drop of a hat." She sighed and took the amulet from Willow. She did understand why she needed it, but she really was getting sick of needing to be rescued every week. "Plus I've got the Scooby romance curse. The first guy I ever kissed was a vampire who tried to turn me and I had to stake him."

"Well, what about this new guy?" Willow asked, trying to be supportive. She really did understand about the trials of trying to find someone decent to date in the supernatural world. "How does he score on the yummy scale?"

Dawn closed her eyes and thought. "Eight point five with a side of scruffy, but he's a solid nine for personality."

"So, cute and headed into hot," Willow mused. "Why'd you give him such a high score for personality?"

"How many guys do you know who aren't language geeks would willingly listen to me talk about ancient human languages and complain about the fact that there isn't a Rosetta stone for ancient demon languages for two hours without complaining, changing the subject, or having their eyes glaze over?" Dawn asked seriously.

"Why didn't you give him a ten?" Willow wanted to know. "After that, he really deserved it."

"He hates magic and magic users," Dawn said. "He got bit by someone using serious black magic."

"Once bitten, twice shy," Willow quoted.

Dawn nodded. "He's seriously in hate. I don't blame him though. It was a total Ethan."

Willow winced. "Well, at least he isn't taking it out on you."

"Yeah, but I still think I want to try the friend thing first. If it goes there later, I'll deal with it then," Dawn said.

Jack was in the process of getting them dressed when he finally gave up ignoring his brother's agitation. The vampire wasn't talking to him, wasn't willing for some reason to come forward and use their body to communicate. He walked over to Black's dresser and placed his hand on the mirror. "Reveal," he snapped, and the mirror changed. Instead of his own reflection the mirror now showed Black pacing back and forth. "What is wrong with you?"

The vampire continued to pace. "The girl," he admitted. "I want her."

"She's not a meal!" Jack said, leaning in towards the mirror.

"Not like that!" Black protested, throwing up his hands. He crossed his arms over his chest and finally stopped pacing. Jack was relieved. Black's internal pacing had kept him up for hours and he really hadn't gotten enough sleep by the time the alarm had gone off. "I want to claim her," Black admitted quietly.

"We only met her last night. She's too young. She's only eighteen," Jack said, a little too quickly. "If you tried she'll get pissed off and so will the Red Witch. The last thing we need is to have two powerful magic users gunning for us."

"You like her too," Black said. He slipped out of his agitated stance and turned to face his brother.

"Of course I like her too," Jack said. He thought that Black's knowing grin was a bit much. "That doesn't change the facts. She's still too young and claiming her is a bad idea."

"She won't be too young forever," Black pointed out. "She'll be old enough for your tastes in less than a decade."

Jack paused. He'd been so busy coming up with reasons to put Dawn in the off limits category that he hadn't thought about the fact that they didn't age. They hadn't aged a day since they'd woken up thirty years ago. That little fact turned the entire situation into something completely different. He grinned right back at his brother. "You're right. More importantly, seven or eight years gives us enough time to convince her that we're serious when we finally ask her. We need to become friends with her and then we need to court her. When she's old enough, we'll ask, both of us. You'll claim her."

"And you'll marry her," Black finished.

"We'll have to take this slow, but the first thing we need to do is to make sure that she doesn't forget us." Jack thought for a moment. "We need to send her a gift if she doesn't come back tonight." He returned to buttoning up his shirt.

"Doesn't Glimaok come in tonight?" Black asked. Jack nodded. They weren't sure exactly what demon species Glimaok was, but he was one of their regulars at the club. He owned a book shop, one that catered to both humans and demons. "I bet he'd know something that a Watcher in Training could use."

"She was complaining about not having translations for ancient demon languages remember?" Jack asked.

Black nodded. "I bet there are spawn's lessons books or scrolls out there, something like human's children's books or something that they use to teach young scholars."

"Nothing too easy though," Jack warned. "The last thing we want is for her to think that we don't take her seriously. Remember her reaction to you getting out the milk and cookies?"

Black grimaced. "You saved our hides there, telling her they were for you and if she wanted some she had to get herself a glass. I thought that all young humans liked milk and cookies."

"They do," Jack told him. "The trouble was that she's an adult, not a child and that is what you offer children. She's also only recently become an adult so she's probably rather sensitive about still being treated like a kid."

"And then she goes and starts a war over who got the most Oreos." Black shook his head. "I'm never going to understand humans."

"You've got to admit it was fun," Jack said. He began looking around their bedroom for their boots.

"It was the most fun we've had in years," Black said softly. "I don't want to lose her."

"We won't," Jack said firmly. He finished lacing up their boots and moved back to the mirror. "If we have to be there every second of the next eight years and help her out with keeping the apocalypse from happening then that's what we'll do."

"Oh hell, we're going to end up one of those Scoobies aren't we," Black groaned.

Jack made a face, but nodded in resignation. "Return," he said, placing his hand on the mirror once more. The mirror returned to its original state. "If that's what it takes, that's what it takes. She's worth it."

"No question," Black agreed.


	3. Chapter 3

Glimaok was more than pleased to have gotten an invitation to have a drink up on Black Jack's balcony. Few people were accorded the honor as unlike most vampires, Black Jack held himself mostly apart from the local supernatural community aside from Jerico, the club that he owned. He made no childer or minions, and he had no desire to gather power or end the world as most vampires did. Most demons thought that it was his particular brand of insanity that led him to lead such a strange life. After all, it wasn't every vampire that thought he was an incubus.

Glimaok was a Zykeeekle demon, the shop keepers of the demonic world. They could pass for human, and often did when dealing with customers, unless someone looked closely. They had quills in their hair, and more serious spikes along their limbs, sharp teeth and retractable claws that extended from their fingers. As a race the most important thing overall for them was profit, but that didn't mean that they did not have hobbies and other interests as well.

Black Jack's delusions weren't the strangest thing that Glimaok had ever heard about, he was in the information business after all, but it did make dealing with the vampire easier when he knew that Black Jack wasn't looking at him as food. "Thank you for the drink, Black Jack. What can I do for you?" he asked, getting right down to business. He wasn't foolish enough to think that the vampire was interested in anything from him but information. Once the vampire had that information and paid for it, he could go back to his evening out.

"I know that you have noticed the slayers coming into the club lately," Jack said. Glimaok nodded. "I have no objections to them as long as they behave themselves."

"I would have thought that they would be on the menu for you," Glimaok ventured. The vampire's meals were exclusively women after all.

Black gave the demon a glare before replying. "They may be pretty and their blood may be powerful, but I'm not stupid enough to stick my neck in that trap. That is nothing more than a good way to die and we have no interest in doing so.

"No, we've met a young lady who is studying to be a Watcher. She's frustrated over her efforts to learn some of the older demonic languages. The First killed off all of the Watchers who could have taught her and she's trying to teach herself. Now, we may not be very old or have a lot to do with the demonic community, but we do keep our ears open. There are prophecies out there that are only written in those languages. We like it here and I think that you do as well."

The implications of the information that Black was passing on did not escape Glimaok. It was the Watchers who made certain that the slayers stopped the apocalypse from happening, and if they couldn't read the prophecies, then they couldn't do their jobs. He nodded. "Not to mention that army of slayers needs to be aimed away from the likes of us. Well, I do have a few things that might help."

Black was about to begin bargaining when the young lady in question came up the stairs to the balcony. "Mageling, I want you to meet Glimaok. He owns a book store over on Carnegie Avenue and is a collector of old books and scrolls written by various demon clans. Glimaok, this is the young lady and Watcher in Training that I was telling you about."

"Greeting, may your nest never fail in its ventures," Dawn said with a small bow. Now she was glad that she hadn't dressed to go clubbing. She looked like a serious student with her hair pulled back in a bun and wearing a sweater with her jeans instead of one of Buffy's tops. She just hoped that she had remembered the right way to say hello. Giles had taught her quite a few different traditional greetings which were meant for different types of demons.

Glimaok threw his head back and laughed. "Well spoken little Watcher, well done indeed. If even half of the new Watchers are as polite as you are I am certain that my business with thrive. May all that you touch bring profits to your nest little Watcher," he said, returning the very proper greeting that she had given him. "There are few Watchers in the past who would have even bothered to acknowledge the likes of me."

Dawn couldn't help it. She snorted as she sat down next to Black Jack. "The old Watchers Council were bigots of the highest order. The First actually did us a huge favor when its Bringers bombed them off the face of the planet. We may be in a bit of a tight spot now when it comes to recruiting new Watchers, but this way we can make sure that they aren't the sort to treat anyone the way the old guys did, including neutral and friendly demons. We even have a few on staff at the slayer school. It helps teach the mini and baby slayers that not everything should be killed on sight."

"Goddess Bless the Resurrected Slayer and her compassion," Glimaok toasted. "She has truly changed our worlds."

"Goddess Bless." Jack lifted his glass as well.

"May her next death be long in coming," Dawn said, lifting the glass of orange soda spiked with tabasco that one of the wait staff had brought her. It was the same drink that she had ordered the night before. One of the nice things about demon bars and clubs was that she could get a good drink without being looked at funny.

"So I am told that you need a source of translations for ancient demon languages," Glimaok told her.

"Yes," Dawn said, throwing a glance at Jack. His eyes flashed and she could just tell that Black was laughing at her. "I know modern Klikaldor, Frayal, and Toloack as well as Sumerian, Latin, and Old Norse but I don't have any place to begin translating the older demonic languages. A lot of the old library's collection was misplaced or lost when the Council's headquarters exploded. We're replacing them as quickly as we can find them, but any new source will be very welcome."

Glimaok hummed and then nodded. "I do believe that I may be of service. Give me a few days to make up a list of what I have for sale besides the usual prophecy texts. If there are enough items that your people are interested in, I do have discounts for volume customers. Here's my card and good evening to you both." He handed Dawn a business card and with a bow left to return to the bar.

"You were listening," Dawn accused. For that alone she'd have to give him another half a point.

"Kind of hard not to," Black joked.

"Yes, but you didn't let it go in one ear and out the other. I've met men who could convince anyone that they were paying attention when in fact they were sleeping with their eyes open," Dawn said with a smile.

"Ah, but you made it interesting and a bit alarming," Jack said, and tugged on one the strands of hair that had escaped her bun. The backs of his fingers brushed the chain around her neck and he pulled his hand back with a yelp. "Ouch, what is that? It bites."

Dawn sighed. "Willow lo-jacked me," she admitted sheepishly. "My magic is really strong, even though I can't do much with it yet. I've only been studying for a little over a year now with Willow and Tara although we've known about it since I was fourteen. I'm taking it slow because I've seen what can go wrong with using magic and getting myself addicted to it is the last thing I want. In the meantime, I'm vulnerable to whoever wants to use me as a sacrifice for whatever and uses overwhelming force to get me."

"Does that happen often?" Jack asked, a bit jokingly. He knew that she hung out with slayers and went to the school. Surely the slayers could take care of anyone who thought that sacrificing Dawn would be a good idea before they got very far.

"It's a Tuesday problem," Dawn said with a shrug.

"A Tuesday problem?"

"It happens about once a month and usually on a Tuesday," Dawn explained. "I think that Willow made up the locator and 911 amulet because she got tired of casting locator spells without any warning because someone realized I was missing."

"There can't be that many rituals or spells that need a human sacrifice, can there?" Jack asked worriedly. He'd never really looked into magic that much, wanting to stay far away from it after what had happened to him and Black, but this was part of Dawn's life. If there was a problem that they could help with, even if it was just by Black having some fun by beating the life out of someone stupid enough to touch their mageling, they needed to know the facts first.

"Well, first off a lot of different types of demons like to kill humans. It's fun for them, and way back in prehistory they decided that sacrificing humans was much better than sacrificing one of their own spawn whenever a blood sacrifice was needed. So a lot of demonic rituals were reworked with a human taking the place of the usual offerings," Dawn explained.

She'd never had anyone actually ask about the why behind her little problem with being kidnapped all the time. It was usually just - oh Dawn's been kidnapped again, let's go rescue her and have fun slaying all the big bads, but Jack really was interested and paying close attention and somehow Dawn could tell Black was paying just as much attention as his brother. It definitely gave her stomach flutters, but she wasn't going to pay attention to that right now.

"Then you have the demons who developed a taste for certain types of humans and are willing to give favors to people, either demon or humans, who are willing to feed their cravings. A couple of examples are the Mayor of Sunnydale handed over a bunch of babies as part of his ascension to demonhood, and there was a fraternity that I heard about that offered a snake demon two or three high school aged girls every fifty years in exchange for wealth and power. And then there is the fact that any spell can be given a power boost with a blood sacrifice. It's just that white witches and the like offer up their own blood while black magic users use the blood of others.

"When you add in the all the demons and people who either try to end the world by opening the hellmouth or just to use it to gain power for themselves, it really isn't surprising that they try to grab the one person that they know will give them the biggest power boost as a sacrificial victim. Of course about a quarter of the time I'm kidnapped, it's because of my family, and then it's the usual 'do this or do that or we'll kill her sort of thing."

"So I get why they wouldn't be stupid enough to try the Red Witch, or one of the Senior Slayers, but why would you be the one to give them the biggest boost as you put it?" Jack asked.

Dawn gave a bit of an awkward shrug, trying not to blush. "Between the whole purity thing, the fact that I'm as strong magically as Willow, and my family I'm probably the only three strike sacrificial lamb anywhere near the hellmouth. So I ended up having bikini season ruined for me before I was even old enough to fill one out properly."

They stifled their first instinct to offer to help her take care of the purity problem for the simple reason that they wanted far more from her than simply a single meal. "How so?" Jack asked. In answer Dawn lifted the hem of her sweater just enough to show them the two scars that were all that was left of the first time someone tried to sacrifice her. "Tell us that the ones responsible for those are dead," they growled.

There was a weird echo in the growl that told Dawn they were both talking at the same time. "Four years dead," she promised.

They relaxed and Black retreated, giving control to Jack. He stood up, taking off Black's coat and hat. Then he sat down and shoved the sleeves of his shirt up, exposing their arms and the scars that they carried. "As one sacrificial victim to another, don't let them dictate your life. If you want to wear a bikini, wear one and show your scars with pride. That they exist at all means that you won and they lost. Ours have no impact on how we dress. We dress the way we want to, when we want to, regardless of whether or not our scars will show."

Dawn blinked. "I never thought about them that way before. All I could see was the price that my family paid to rescue me."

"I'd hazard a guess that it was a price they paid willingly," Jack said as he gently brushed a finger across the scars.

All Dawn could do was nod. Buffy had paid the price willingly, jumping from the platform right into the dimensional breach and dying for her magically created little sister. That had led to a couple of years of badness, but in the end everything had worked out for the better. All of the potentials would now become slayers and they would not be fighting alone. They would have their sister slayers and Watchers trained by the Scoobies to support their slayers instead of using them. "You're right. They are something to be proud of," she told them as she ran a finger over the scar tissue that covered their wrists and ran up their arms.


	4. Chapter 4

How the latest big bad had come up with this idea Dawn didn't know, but it was alarmingly effective in distracting their efforts in keeping big, bad and stupid from getting control of the hellmouth. "I HATE YOU!" someone screamed out in the hall, and Buffy's Troll hammer came crashing through the library wall. On the other side of the research table Andrew whimpered in fear.

It was either her keyness or sheer dumb luck that Dawn wasn't affected by the curse like every other female at the school. Personally Dawn would have bet on it being the dumb luck as she was a very female Key, thank you very much. Giles, Wesley and Xander, backed up by the rest of the male staff and students were doing their best to contain the damage, but there was only so much that they could do. It was up to Dawn and Andrew to find the way to break the curse, Dawn because she wasn't affected and Andrew because just the sight of him was enough to set off another round of continental sized mood swings.

It wasn't like those who lived at and ran the school hadn't dealt with slayers with PMS before. There was usually at least four or five with the condition at any given time roaming the halls, but never before had ALL of the slayers, witches, lady hunters and female Watchers had it all at the same time and magically increased by an incredible amount.

Slayers who laughed off what would be life threatening injuries to anyone else were down in the infirmary whimpering in pain from cramps and headaches. Many of the girls couldn't stay awake, no matter what they tried, and more couldn't leave the bathrooms. The rest seemed to swing between anger and tears as the rest of the symptoms such as bloating, pimples, food cravings, etc. were driven far beyond what was normal. To say the least it was chaos at slayer central.

As Andrew sat and stared at the Troll hammer, terrified that the next slayer tantrum was going to kill him, Dawn had finally had enough. In order to break the curse, they first had to find out what the exact wording was which meant research, but that research couldn't be done when every five minutes they were interrupted by screams, yelling, fighting, and now Troll hammers being thrown through the walls. It was time to get out of here and find some peace and quiet where they could concentrate.

The only trouble was there really weren't that many quiet places that Dawn knew about where they could spread out with books on magic, demons and the moon goddess (the obvious origin of the curse). Every place where she knew that the people who owned the place knew about the supernatural was usually busy and crowded. Dawn straightened up as a thought struck her – except for Jerico at this time of day. It was ten in the morning, which meant that Black Jack's club would be closed right now.

"Andrew, pack up the books and take them down to my car. I'll meet you there in a minute," she ordered, and ran out of the room. She went down to the infirmary, where Wesley was watching over Faith, Buffy and Willow. The Dark Slayer was curled up on one of the beds, whimpering in pain from the cramps. Willow was crying from the pain of the migraines. Tara couldn't even stand to be in the same room with her girlfriend because of her own problems – namely keeping her temper and not blasting everything around her with her magic because Willow was in such pain.

Wes was sitting in between the two beds, helpless to stop the effects, but refusing to leave his slayer. He had made a promise to her when she'd asked him to return as her Watcher and nothing was going to make him break it. He had a stack of books in front of him, piled on the floor and a book on his lap. One hand was turning pages, while the other was stroking Faith's back letting her know that he was still there. "Wes, find anything?" Dawn asked as she entered the long room filled with beds, women and girls crying and in pain, and the male medics trying to ease it.

Wesley shook his head. "There's nothing yet. When I get my hands on the bloody pillock who did this…" His voice trailed off, but the look on his face said it all. There wasn't a single male Watcher here who wasn't ready to tear apart the person responsible apart with his bare hands, and no few of the female Watchers had already tried to leave the school in order take their tempers and their slayer's out on the local vampire population. Fortunately for the demonic and human populations of Cleveland, Giles had forbidden any of them from leaving.

"I'm taking Andrew and getting out of here. Alice threw Buffy's Troll hammer through the library wall." Wes winced. Alice was only fourteen. Xander was going to have his work cut out for him when this was all done with all the repairs that would be needed from slayer temper tantrums. "We're taking the books with us and finding a quiet spot to research. We'll have our cell phones on, so if you find anything give us a call."

"Of course, this place really isn't conductive to quiet research right now. Call me if you find anything that I can help with," he requested.

Dawn nodded and stopped by Buffy's bed, laying her hands on her sister's head before leaving. Buffy had insisted that Giles and the others not sit with her. They had other things that had to be done, namely finding and breaking the curse so that she could break big, bad and stupid. Dawn refused to cry as she pulled out her cell and told Giles that she and Andrew were headed out. He could have been anywhere in the school and she didn't want to waste time trying to find him.

Andrew had filled her back seat with books and was closing the lid of her trunk when she arrived at the parking lot. "I've got everything from the library, including all of the dictionaries just in case."

"Good," Dawn said, as she got in and started the car. Andrew scrambled around and got in the passenger seat. Once he was in and buckled up Dawn left the parking lot. Andrew retrieved the book he had been going through from the dashboard and dove back in. "First things first Andrew." He looked up. "You are not to tell anyone who my friend is, or so help me I **will** transport your entire collection of action figures, comics **and** boxed sets right into the sun. Do you understand?" Andrew gulped and nodded vigorously.

"Good," she said, and then called Black Jack. "Black Jack, I've got an emergency on my hands and I need a quiet place to research. Can I use the club before it opens?"

"Sure, not a problem. When will you get here?" he asked sleepily.

"About ten minutes," Dawn told him.

JERICO

A woman leaving the club kissed Jack on the cheek before getting into her car and leaving as Dawn pulled into the parking lot. "Girlfriend?" she asked as she loaded his arms full of heavy books. She had noticed that he was just wearing a pair of blue jeans, (kind of hard not to, it bumped him up to a full nine) although the pattern of scars across his chest was rather interesting in a researchy, not important right now kind of way.

"Dinner," he said with shrug. He wasn't going to hide how they kept Black fed. It wasn't like any of the women meant anything to them more than that. "So what's the emergency?" he asked, leading the way into the main room of the club. The lights were all on and a couple of tables had been pulled together.

"The most recent apprentice to the forces of darkness, following in Darth Sidious' foul footsteps has struck a terrible blow against the mighty amazons of the light!" Andrew began.

"ANDREW!" Dawn snapped. "No geek, he doesn't speak it!" She turned to Black, who had taken over the minute they were out of the sun as he was stronger. "The latest person to try and take control of the hellmouth cursed every girl and woman at the slayer school with a magically enhanced case of PMS. Buffy, Faith and Willow are incapacitated. We need to find out how to break the curse before a) whoever it is does whatever he needs us out of commission for and b) the slayers destroy the school from the continent sized mood swings."

Black shuddered. "You two stay here and get to work. We'll get the rest of the books from your car." Dawn handed over the keys and Black left, shaking his head.

"You're dating Glory guy?" Andrew wanted to know the minute the vampire had left the room. "And why did his evil alter ego leave the woman alive if she was his dinner?" he squeaked.

Dawn glared. "We are not dating, we're just friends. Black doesn't kill the women whose blood he drinks because it makes Jack sick to their stomach." She sat down and opened the book that was in front of her. "Now get back to work."

After Black had set the last of the books down on the table, he reached and dragged another chair over to the table. He sat down and picked up a familiar looking book. He looked over the first page and then dragged one of the dictionaries over, checking to see if he was right. "I can read this," he told Dawn. "I wonder what other languages we might know."

Dawn looked up to check which book Black was looking at. "That one is Latin. Good, we need another set of eyes." They weren't upset at Dawn's brusque tone. One slayer with PMS was something to avoid at all costs, all of them with it was an emergency of the highest order and Black was glad to be able to help her beyond giving her a place to research.

Two hours passed with little sound other than pages turning and huffs of frustration. "Mageling, I think Black's got something here," Jack said, passing over the book his brother was looking at over his brother's protests.

"Damn it Jack, it's not the right one."

"The curse sounds a bit flowery I'll admit, but that's still a good description of PMS."

While two argued, Dawn examined the page. "Hemet is the older Egyptian name for Hecate, the moon goddess who was depicted as the maiden, the mother and the crone. More specifically, she's the patron goddess of a group of vampires called the Empusae. If there is any moon goddess who would go against a slayer, it's her."

"See, I told you," Jack said.

"The curse is fairly straight forward. I've got to get it back the school. Thanks so much guys!" Dawn said, jumping up from her chair. She kissed Jack on the cheek. "Remember Andrew, one word about any of this and it's off to the sun for your stuff!"

They didn't know what Dawn meant about the boy's stuff, but it was obvious that he did because he turned the palest shade of white they'd ever seen on a human. "Leave the rest of the books here, and get the slayers back out doing what they do best," Black said. Dawn kissed his cheek as well, gave Andrew the book, and dragged him out of the club, already talking to Wes on her cell.

"You know, I really don't envy those vampires once the slayers get a hold of them," Black said.

"Well they only have themselves to blame," Jack said as they began gathering up Dawn's books. "I mean, come on! It's one thing to try and take over the hellmouth. It's stupid to try and set yourself up like that, but most master vampires try something like it at least once. But for them to go and deliberately piss off every single slayer in the city where their main headquarters are located?"

"Yeah, we'd better call everyone and tell our crew to stay home tonight. If the club is open tonight it'll probably get wrecked when the slayers go after them," Black said. "And I think we should both order our meals in. Doesn't the Chinese Garden have that one delivery girl?"

"Fast food it is, after a nap though. I'm exhausted," Jack agreed. It wouldn't be the first time he'd had rice for breakfast.


	5. Chapter 5

It was Wednesday. This was significant to Black Jack only because the day before had been Tuesday, and just like Dawn had told them would happen sooner or later, she had been kidnapped. She had called him after she'd been rescued to tell him that she was alive and she was sorry for not showing up at the club like she'd promised. Like that had really mattered to them; that she was alive and unharmed was far more important. They'd asked her to come with Jack on a picnic lunch the next day so that they could see for themselves what sort of shape she was in. If she'd been hurt beyond a bruise or two… the very idea shook them both badly.

They'd talked before about ending up as Scoobies – helpers to the slayers, or more to the point The Chosen Two. It hadn't been appealing then. They'd stayed as far out of the way of such things as slayers and the end of the world as they could for the last thirty years. On the other hand, if it meant that they could be there the next time Dawn was kidnapped and could help rescue her it became much, much more appealing. It also meant that they'd both have to learn how to fight beyond what little Black knew instinctively.

Black was a good brawler, no question, but he didn't stand a chance against more professional fighters, and Jack didn't know how to fight at all. He'd never wanted to learn and the brawls that Black got into at least once a week had kept the violence loving part of the vampire happy. Jack had talked to someone he knew who had been a soldier (one of those behind the lines types who had really needed to know how to defend himself) and was now retired and asked for lessons. The man knew about the supernatural and had promised to teach them once he'd been told that they needed the lessons so that they could protect their mate. That didn't mean that Jack was looking forward to the lessons.

Jack finished packing his saddle bags with his lunch, (he'd known Dawn long enough to know that it wasn't a good idea to have her make a lunch for anyone else) and grabbed his motorcycle helmet and his leather jacket. He'd promised Dawn a ride weeks ago on his bike and now was the time to make good on that promise. After a quick ride he pulled up in front of the slayer school to find Dawn waiting for him at the gate in leathers, wearing a backpack and holding onto her own helmet. She'd told him not to bother getting her one as one of the slayers had already done so the year before.

"Ready?" he asked as he accepted a magical choker that would allow them to talk to each other, much like the electronic helmet mics did for normal humans.

"Yep, hey how's Black handling this?" Dawn asked as she got on behind Jack. She was already wearing her choker.

Jack pulled out answered as he pulled away from the school. "Have you ever seen someone who's scared of mice confronted with one, but is too much of a bad ass to admit that he's scared?" Jack laughed. "And he's pissed off at me for telling you that. After all, it's not like a mouse could kill someone."

"Where as sunlight is majorly bad news for him," Dawn said.

"Yes, but unfortunately if humans don't get enough sunlight they get vitamin D deficiency, which is really not good if it gets severe. It can lead to bone fractures, chronic fatigue, muscle cramps and weakness – just, really not fun to have to suffer through as we found out the hard way," Jack admitted.

"That does not sound good at all," Dawn said with a wince.

"Nope, admittedly I probably already had a borderline condition before we were merged but after that happened it worsened rapidly because I didn't eat a lot of foods with vitamin D and there was no way Black would ever let me go out in sunlight. He had a panic attack every time I even went close. We think that he might have had a really close call before we woke up together. The first year was the worst, trying to figure out what had happened to us and how to deal with it and each other," Jack said.

"So that's the reason Black was getting you milk and cookies," Dawn realized.

"I really don't like milk, but if I have cookies or cereal with it, it's not so bad," Jack admitted. Wrapped up in their conversation, and with Jack making sure that they didn't wipe out or got lost, neither of them realized that they were being followed.

Faith easily tracked the pair ahead of her. She knew that it wasn't cool to be following Little D on her first big date with her new guy, but it was really hinky that he didn't know who she was. Everyone knew the Scoobies. Hell, they had changed the entire world, not just by activating all of the slayers, but also by befriending those demons who just wanted to live and let live. That was one of the reasons that Little D was such a kidnapping magnet, and Faith would rather go straight back to prison, hell she'd rather go straight back to the hell hole she'd grown up in without any of her slayer abilities, rather than let some scumbag hurt the littlest Scooby.

She followed them up to one of the bigger parks in the area, one with lots of trees, picnic tables, playgrounds and people. They were far enough ahead of her that she was able to keep out of sight as they parked. Once off the bikes it was even easier for her to keep out of their sight, mingling with the other people out for the day at the park. When they reached a grassy area and spread out a blanket, she took to the trees. That would let her get in close enough that she would be able to hear them, but they still wouldn't be able to see her. If the guy really wasn't a jerk of the first order, then she didn't want to ruin the first real date Little D had had in nearly a year.

Once they reached a good spot, Jack spread out the blanket he'd brought and Dawn set out their lunches. Then they both stripped down out of their leather jackets. Dawn was wearing a halter top that showed a lot more than she had once been comfortable with due to her scars. Now the injuries that she'd gotten the night before, mostly bruises and a stab wound to her left shoulder, were also visible. She wasn't going to hide anymore.

Jack also stripped off his t-shirt, wanting to get a maximum dose of sunlight so that Black didn't have to deal with his fear for longer than he had to. "How bad's the shoulder?" he asked.

"Just a stab wound, it's not even very deep. The head idiot was aiming for my throat and missed when Xander shot him with a crossbow," Dawn easily admitted.

"It'll make a nice scar," Jack smirked.

Dawn smirked right back, remembering their conversation on scars. This was the second time she had seen the full extent, or at least she thought so, of the scars that he and his brother had woken up with on the altar that had birthed them. The first time she had been far too worried about her sister to really take a good look but she remembered that there had been something about them that had peaked her interest. "You mind if I take a closer look at yours? There was something familiar about them, but I didn't have time to look close last time."

"Sure," Jack shrugged, and leaned back a little so that she could see the full extent of what had once been a truly bloody mess.

Dawn leaned over and carefully traced the scars one at a time. It didn't take long for her to realize what it was that had caught her attention before. "These are runes," she told him. "The idiot who made the two of you brothers screwed up big time."

Jack looked down, trying to see whatever it was that she saw. "What do you mean?" It wasn't like they had never thought that before, but it had been just as likely that whoever had crashed the ritual was the one who had screwed things up for them.

Dawn shook her head. "I recognize the ritual he was trying to do, but he didn't make the cuts properly. I wish I could say it was because the slayer of the time or whoever it was interrupted and he twitched, but there's too much that's wrong. The way he screwed this up…I'm not even sure the Powers That Be themselves could separate the two of you now."

Jack smiled and pulled gently on her long braid. "That's ok mageling. We got used to the idea that we would never be separate again a long time ago. We just wish that we knew who we were before. Did I have a family? What line did Black belong to? Did I have kids or did he have childer? That sort of thing," he said.

"Too bad you don't have an Army Ranger or Marine tat or something. If you had been military, we could track who you were down pretty easily," Dawn said. "I might be able to track down some information about the ritual that you were sacrificed at through the old Watcher's diaries though, at least if it was a slayer that interrupted. Giles found the key to the pocket dimension that holds the library of the original diaries of every Watcher last week."

Jack leaned forward intensely. "If you could tell us that the mage who did this died slowly and in terrible pain you would make us the happiest people on this planet."

Dawn snickered, but understood where he was coming from. Neither of the two had asked to become what they were now, after all. "Oh! I got a new book from Glimaok a couple of days ago," Dawn said, and turned away to pull a large tome out of her backpack.

Up in her tree Faith could see Glory guy pull back, slightly disappointed but he just rolled over on his belly next to Dawn so that they both could check out her new book. He didn't say anything or even look like he was upset that she had drawn back from the kiss he was about to lay on her where she could see him. Instead he was actually looking like he was digging the snore fest that Little D liked to read.

Hell, Faith had seen that book when Dawn had brought it back from the demon bookshop. It wasn't even about how to kill a demon or a prophecy or something important. It was a book on building houses and stuff back in the time of mud huts or some shit like that, and this guy was actually looking like he was having fun listening to Dawn read it to him.

Ok, yeah vampire under a curse type thing, but Faith liked Angel and respected him as another Champion and a fairly nice guy even if he was far too hooked on B, and so far Glory guy was treating Little D right. Also, D had just said that she thought not even the Powers that could kiss her ass could separate the man from the vampire which hadn't been the case for Angel until Willow and Tara had gotten involved. Dawn Summers was one of the top researchers on the Watchers Council, and she hadn't even graduated from high school yet. If she said it couldn't be done, then Faith was more than willing to take her word for it.

Faith nodded to herself. She wouldn't be the one to spill the beans on Dawn's new guy to Buffy. The girl had every right to keep that news to herself, especially after Buffy and Xander had gone all serial killer on the last guy who tried to ask her out. Dude hadn't even been a demon, just a football player from another school. This guy, if he was willing to date Little D without getting the Scoobies involved, like trying to turn her or use her against them or some shit like that, then he was five by five with her. Of course, that didn't mean that she wasn't going to stick around for the rest of this date, just in case.


	6. Chapter 6

Tara was really and truly pleased with herself and the romantic weekend she had planned. Willow had loved the hotel and restaurant, and today they were headed out to the Great Lakes Science Center, one of Willow's favorite museums. A hands on science museum, the Center was always changing its exhibits, and Willow didn't get to go nearly as often as she wanted to. Tara had made certain that, barring an apocalypse and it wasn't the right season for that, they would get to spend the entire day exploring the museum.

It was as they were walking through one of the exhibit halls that Willow and Tara spotted Dawn, and she wasn't alone. She and the man who was holding her hand were giggling their way through the science of fear exhibits. Admittedly, once you'd faced down demons bent on using your intestines for jump ropes, most of the stuff here just wasn't scary enough to even register as anything to be concerned about. "Isn't he a little old for her?" Tara asked, worried. She watched as the man raised Dawn's hand and kissed it.

"He's not just too old for her, he's a vampire," Willow said grimly. She began searching through her bag for a stake.

"Are you sure?" Tara asked, watching as Dawn and the man walked through a patch of sunlight courtesy of one of the skylights.

"He's Glory guy," Willow told her. "Sorry honey, but we can't let him get to her. Even if it's just the human guy who's trying to date her, it isn't of the good." The two witches followed the couple through the museum.

Tara wasn't too sure about the situation. While admittedly, the few times that a vampire had been involved with a Scooby didn't end well, she doubted that Dawn didn't know the man was also a vampire. Her first boyfriend had tried to turn her and she'd been very careful ever since. "Willow, Dawn's always real careful about the guys that she sees. I'm sure that she knows he's a vampire. Don't jump to conclusions. There's got to be something about him that tells Dawn he's safe."

"Of course not!" Willow told her, still looking for her stake. "Rats, I think I left my stake back home." Tara sighed, but followed Willow after the couple.

In Tara's opinion, the determining factor would have to be just what was holding the vampire back from the usual behavior of the species. Curses could easily be broken and while Spike's chip hadn't shorted out yet, everyone knew it was only a matter of time until it did. Once a vampire was unleashed, well they went right back to being evil vampires. Tara knew that Dawn knew that, so what could have convinced her that this particular vampire was safe?

It took hours before Willow and Tara could find a private place where they could confront the couple. The old steam ship that had been turned into a museum had lots of open state rooms where people could see how people traveled on the old ship and her sisters. Willow pushed Black Jack and Dawn into one and sealed the door with a quick 'don't notice me' spell. "Dawn, get out of the way," Willow ordered, her hands rising from her sides as she called her magic to her. "He's a vampire."

"Well duh," Dawn snarked, refusing move. She stood calmly between Willow and Black Jack as it wasn't Willow's magic that she was afraid of. "Of course he is."

Jack tried to say something but both young women were ignoring him and Willow simply talked right over him. "Dawn! What were you thinking? You know that's not of the good, even if he is semi good right now," Willow chided her. Tara hung back, observing both Dawn and Glory guy.

"It's not an Angel situation, and you'd better not tell them who my family is. They don't know who they are," Dawn said, determined to protect her boyfriends. "For that matter you'd better not tell my family about them either."

Willow ignored the warning flashing in Dawn's eyes. "Oh please, he does so too know," she said, aiming a glare over Dawn's shoulder.

"Dawn doesn't want us to know, so we're ignoring everything that might tell us. She'll decide when the time is right for us to know. We're respecting her wishes," Jack finally got to say.

"Which is something you should be doing, considering it's none of your business who Dawn dates," Black hissed at Willow. They were both very nervous at being trapped by the witch, but they weren't about to back down. Dawn was theirs and Willow had no right to try and come between them.

"She needs to date someone normal!" Willow told them sternly.

"Like you've ever dated anyone normal in your life, male or female," Dawn retorted. "Let's see, there was the robotic demon, the werewolf musician, a witch and a slayer. You're not my mother Willow." Dawn was getting up a head full of steam. She couldn't believe that Willow of all people was trying to get rid of her boyfriends just because one of them happened to be a vampire.

"Dawn, that's going a little too far," Tara said quietly, but neither Dawn nor Willow was listening to her.

"We're not talking about me. You've seen what happens when someone dates a vampire. How can you ignore that? It's all badness," Willow declared. The memories of Angelus stalking Buffy was too near the surface for Willow. She couldn't let that happen to Dawn.

"I told you, it's not an Angel. They can't be separated," Dawn told Willow. "Not even the Powers could do it."

"Every curse can be broken," Willow ground out. She couldn't understand why Dawn was trying to defend this.

"You're right, but it isn't a curse. It's a Xandered Ethan. The caster had a really badly translated copy of the ritual he was trying to do and it didn't work properly. Honestly I'm surprised that he even managed to get any power going at all," Dawn said.

Jack quietly moved around the edge of the room over to where Willow's girlfriend stood. "What's a Xandered Ethan?" he asked her. Dawn had been teaching him different languages, something that he had found that he enjoyed although it bored Black to tears, but this was something entirely new.

"A chaos spell that's gone really, really wrong, and not what the caster wanted at all," she told him. "The Scoobies have their own language and it takes a while to get used to, but once you get used to it, it really does make a lot of sense," she promised him with a shy smile.

"Prove it, because all I see is just another curse," Willow demanded.

"I'm sorry guys, would you mind?" Dawn asked, turning to where Jack and Tara stood.

"Not as long as she keeps her magic to herself," Jack said. That was the one thing he didn't think that they could handle, having a hostile witch push her magic on them.

"No magic," Black demanded, "Or she can go take a flying leap of the end of this boat."

"Fair enough," Dawn said. Turning back to Willow she instructed, "Don't touch them with your magic Willow…" only to have Willow interrupt her.

"How am I supposed to check the magic holding them together without using magic?"

Jack sighed. He could already tell that Willow and Dawn were about to begin yelling at each other again. "By checking out our scars," he told Willow, mostly to distract her from Dawn. He unbuttoned his shirt and spread it open so that the runes etched into his chest were visible.

When Willow turned around and saw the ruin of his chest, she blanched white. "Oh Goddess," she whispered. She gulped and then looked closer, trying to read what the runes said. "Oh that's not good. The mixing and matching of spells is never good. That way leads to much badness, and oh my goddess! You two aren't just sharing a body space; they mixed your bodies together too. That's what you meant when you said that you knew what the other one was eating. Your insides are connected," Willow said, trying not to throw up at the thought of Jack actually feeling and tasting Black's meals.

"Think anyone could get them apart?" Dawn said smugly.

Willow shook her head, still in a bit of shock. "We told you it was permanent," Black said. He was not happy. This was supposed to be his turn to spend time with Dawn without interruption the way Jack did when he got his dose of sunlight. Of course Jack took over if he was needed, like if they had to walk through sunlight, but other than that they had both agreed it wasn't fair if Black didn't get his turn spending time with Dawn.

"Sorry we interrupted your date," Tara said. "Come on honey, let's let them get back to it. And Dawn, don't worry we won't tell your family about this." She turned to Black. "By the way, hurt her and you'll wish we'd beaten you to death with a shovel."

"Thanks Tara," Dawn said. "I guess it was too much to ask for you to not give out the shovel speech."

Tara simply smiled at her before turning back to her girlfriend. "See, this is what happens when you jump to conclusions," Tara told Willow as she cancelled the hiding spell and they left the ship's state room. "And she's right; it's not our place to tell her she can't date someone. She's old enough to decide that for herself."

"You're ignoring who my family is, huh?" Dawn asked, as she helped Black to button up his shirt.

The vampire's hands were shaking from the release of tension after the confrontation and he welcomed the distraction. "Yes, and we will until you tell us who they are."

"But you already know," Dawn said. "I'm never going to be just Dawn."

The disappointment that covered her face was more than either of them could take. "You are our mageling, and nothing changes that; not that busybody teacher of yours or your family. When you're ready for us to be a part of the save the world part of your life, you'll let us know," Black told her. He put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up. "Who you are is what matters to us, not who you're related to. You're the most important person in the world to us mageling." He cupped her face in his hands and gently pulled her into a kiss, one that quickly turned passionate.

Dawn pulled away reluctantly. "There's still going to be magic. I can't stop being a witch." That she knew was going to be the real killer. She'd known that before they started dating. With what they'd gone through, she really didn't blame them for hating and fearing magic.

"We just had our worst nightmare about magic come true, and all we did was get a little shaky. We'll never be able to say we like it, not even the spell we use to talk to each other, but we can deal with it," Black said.

Jack took control and tucked Dawn's hair behind her ear. "We just don't want to get hit with more magic, that's all. Who knows what would happen to us then? We've been screwed up enough as it is. Do you want to keep exploring the museum?"

"I still want to see that sea monster movie," Dawn admitted.

"Good, so do I," Black said. "Not that I expect you to find the creatures to be all that scary, because once you've had real monsters try to kill you the rest seems tame." He took her hand in his and laced their fingers together. They had some time before the movie started so they didn't have to rush down the ship's passage ways towards the exit to get to the theater.

Dawn nodded. "That's all too true. Still, it's bound to be interesting, plus sitting down and relaxing sounds good after that little scream fest."

"Why'd she come down so hard on us anyway?" Jack asked. "It's not like we're normal, either of us. I mean, I could see where she'd be right to be upset if you were dating a normal vampire, but she already knew that Black doesn't kill people."

"There was this vampire named Angelus. He was cursed with the return of the soul that belonged to the body the vampire inhabited. With the return of the soul, they were both overcome with remorse for the deeds of the vampire. The soul took the name Angel, because he was still a vampire and didn't want to go by the name he had when he was still alive. He's a Champion for the Powers now and works in LA. The problem was that it was a curse and curses can be broken, usually fairly easily. If Angel got really, truly happy, then he lost his soul and Angelus was released. Willow and Tara fixed it so that he can't lose his soul anymore, but it caused a lot of problems when it happened the first time," Dawn explained.

"And she was worried that something similar would happen to us and you would be hurt," Black said.

Dawn nodded. "Angelus pretty much stalked and terrified everyone while he was loose. He was obsessed with my sister." She looked sideways at him. "So, would you go all stalkery on me if Jack wasn't making you behave?"

Black grinned. "Of course I would. You're perfect and I have no intention of letting you get away from me." He brought their hands up so that he could kiss the back of her hand. "Jack's always taking things way too slow." Dawn laughed, but said nothing more as they got in line for the movie.


	7. Chapter 7

Mornings at the slayer school were hectic as always, but this morning was a bit more because Robin Wood, son of slayer Nikki Wood and the principal of the school, was leaving for England. This trip was as much to get him away from Cleveland as it was to go and get the latest batch of slayers from Europe. The reason for this was fairly simple. Spike was on his way from LA to Cleveland, and while he and Robin had made their peace enough to work together, no one wanted to force Robin to work with the vampire who had killed his mother unless it was absolutely necessary.

"Robin, I'm desperate. Can I borrow your mom's Watcher Diary?" Dawn asked as she sat down at the table full of staff; also known as the Scoobies for the most part.

"Why do you want it?" he asked, pouring syrup over his waffles.

"I'm trying to find information on a botched chaos ritual that was done sometime between thirty five and twenty five years ago in New York. There were three slayers in that area in that time frame, and neither of the other two slayers stopped one. There was a human sacrifice involved," Dawn rattled off as she piled her plate with waffles, jalapenos and strawberry syrup. The others at the table were well used to her strange tastes in foods. Buffy insisted that it was because the monks messed something up with the making the Key human spell, because there was no way Dawn's sense of taste came from her.

"If I recall correctly there was one such incident," Robin said thoughtfully. "It was in Central Park if I'm remembering right."

"That would have been it! A bunch of demons, some vampires I think, and a guy for the sacrifice," Dawn said.

"Why are you researching a botched Chaos spell? Is there something we need to know?" Giles asked, concerned. Any one researching into Chaos magic would have had him worried, but having Dawn do the research nearly had him preparing to have a heart attack. He couldn't lose another person in his life to Chaos.

"Do you remember Jerico? It's the mixed nightclub downtown," Dawn said calmly.

"That's the one run by that Glory guy, right?" Xander asked.

Dawn slammed her, thankfully empty, mug down on the table. "Don't call him that! There is nothing hellgoddy about him and the next time anyone mentions HER, they'd better be prepared to have both my boots up their butts!" she growled.

"Sorry?" he offered. He thought Dawn had gotten better about the subject of the hellgoddess who had hunted her for the first year of her existence. Of course, that had been the reason for her first foray into the lovely world of being a sacrificial victim, and really he should have realized that Dawn was never going to get over that particular part of her life.

Dawn sighed. "Sorry for overreacting, Xan. I had a nightmare last night and the memory is just a little too close to the surface right now." Buffy reached over and squeezed Dawn's hand in sympathy. There wasn't a single person who sat at the table who didn't have nightmares because of the things they had seen or been involved in over the last nine or ten years.

"Don't worry about it. You're right about it being a bad comparison and _she_ really isn't a subject any of us really wants to bring up on a regular basis anyway," Xander easily told her.

"Their names are Black and Jack. Black is the vampire. They know I'm a Watcher in Training and they asked me to find out anything I could about how they got the way they are," Dawn told the group, getting back to the original subject.

"You are a Watcher in all but name Dawn," Giles told her with a smile.

"I can't be a Watcher until I graduate Giles, but thanks for the support," Dawn smiled at her sister's Watcher and their father figure.

"Are they trying to get separated?" Buffy asked.

Dawn shook her head. "No, no one can separate them, not even the Powers. Willow and I both checked that out. They're just hoping that the person casting the spell that created them died a horrible and painful death at the hands of whoever it was that crashed the party. I'm hoping that was a slayer."

"Can't say I blame him there," Xander said with a shudder. "Sharing body space with a vampire for all eternity cannot be of the good, poor guy."

"Black's not so bad. He kind of reminds me of Spike a little. Anyway, they made friends with each other," Dawn huffed. "They kind of had to."

"We're sure that this vampire cannot get loose?" Wesley asked the two witches. Having worked for Angel and dealt with Angelus, he was cautious about contained vampires.

"Positive," they both answered. Willow was a little green as she continued. "It's actually a worse case than what happened to Ben. Those two were actually completely separate, just sharing the same body space. Black and Jack are actually mixed together. They know everything that is happening, no matter which one of them is in control."

"I'll get you the diary after breakfast Dawn," Robin promised. "I know that you'll look after it."

"I hope that someday all of the slayers will have someone they can pass a copy of their diaries on to," Buffy said. While the life span of a slayer had been lengthened considerably, it was still a hazardous occupation and there would always be casualties. Thinking about what came after now meant more than a hurried burial and a search for the next girl. Parents, siblings, sister slayers, and eventually children were all given the full support they needed at the loss of their family member.

Later that night:

"Just remember that before Giles took over, Watchers were incredibly stuffy," Dawn warned them. She and Black Jack were curled up together on the couch in his/their apartment above the club. Dawn opened the diary to the relevant section.

~Tonight Chaos sorcerer David Wallace will attempt to perform a ritual that will allow the god Janus to possess him, unleashing the full powers of the God of Chaos on this unsuspecting world. My slayer is prepared and I have no doubt will triumph over the forces of darkness, even if she falls while doing so. I know that her time upon this earth grows short, but I am satisfied that our duty has been acceptably fulfilled~

Dawn looked up at Jack. "Man, this one is almost as bad as Travers was. No wonder Robin grew up to be such a stuffed shirt considering this guy raised him after Spike killed his mom."

"I thought that slayer couldn't have kids," Black asked.

"Nikki was Called rather late for a slayer. She was seventeen and already had Robin. I think that Robin was the reason that she lasted so long. She was fighting for him," Dawn said pensively. "Anyway, back to the diary."

~The site of the ritual itself is in Central Park. It is to be a human sacrifice and Nikki fears that she will be unable to save the intended victim. I have little doubt that this will be the case, but it will be an acceptable loss as his death will keep Wallace busy until Nikki arrives at the altar. He has an impressive array of demons as well as vampires in his employ. Nearly forty stand between Nikki and her duty. They will not stop her. I have trained her well. Wallace will die this night.~

"Well gee, thanks," Jack said sarcastically.

Dawn snickered before she flipped over a few pages. "There's a bunch here about the demons; what types they are, their weaknesses, and how she kills them along with most of the vampires."

~As I suspected the ritual was completed just as Nikki reached the altar. In a surprising move, she threw one of the vampires over the altar, knocking the sorcerer to the ground. Three more vampires fell to Nikki's sword, beheaded, but the one she assaulted Wallace with is also no more, torn apart by the magic unleashed when Wallace fell. Wallace was dispatched with a single thrust of the blade. He may have commanded a number of magics, but in the end he was only a man and no human can withstand a properly executed strike by a slayer. The world is fortunate that the Watcher's Council is able to teach each slayer her sacred duty so that her abilities are not wasted.~

Dawn snorted. "What he really means is they brainwashed the girls so that they wouldn't tell the jerks to take a hike like Buffy did because they were completely worthless. Pompous windbags," she griped.

"Too bad she ended it so quickly. I would have liked to have heard that Janus tore him into little pieces because he'd screwed up," Jack sighed.

"So, I'm possessing Jack because Wallace screwed up the spell and Nikki Wood, Vampire Slayer threw me into the magic when Janus was supposed to be there," Black said. He smiled at the slightly worried look on Dawn's face. "Don't worry about it. We figured out a long time ago that I was probably one of the demons at the ritual. We've made our peace with that. What we want to know is did the Watcher write anything that would identify us?"

Dawn flipped back to the section where the Watcher was identifying demons. "Um, let's see. Ah, here it is. The vampires that Wallace had hired were of Ul'thur's line. That's the group that worshiped the 'miracle child'. I don't know much about that."

Black chuckled a bit evilly. "I've found my miracle. I don't need to go looking for another," he said and leaned down to kiss Dawn.

Dawn eagerly accepted the kiss. When they parted she said, "Well at least now we know why you know Latin. All of Ul'thur's line were taught that so they could read the scrolls he wrote about their 'miracle child'."

"That doesn't explain why I know Latin," Jack pointed out. "What did the pompous windbag say about me?"

Dawn nodded and turned back to the diary. "He really doesn't say much about you. There's a description, and yeah they did think you were dead." She flipped the page. "Wait a minute. He found your clothes and went through them. Here's a list: khaki pants, white button down shirt, tweed jacket and dress shoes." Dawn looked up at Jack for moment, checking out his apparent age. "Hmm, I think I'd better check the colleges in New York for a missing young professor or graduate student, maybe an ABD."

"ABD?" Black asked.

"All But Dissertation," Jack answered automatically. "And I think that I just answered at least part of the question. If I know that, then I must have been involved with a doctorate program somewhere."

Dawn nodded. "It also explains why you know Latin and why you share my taste in books." An evil thought occurred to her and she decided to share it. "I wonder if you were studying mythology or ancient languages?"

Jack gave her a horrified look before Black took over laughing. "I'm possessing a Watcher-wanna-be?"

"I AM NOT!" Jack protested.

"What's wrong with that?" Dawn wanted to know.

Jack sighed. He could still feel Black laughing his head off, damned vampire. "There's nothing wrong with you wanting to be a Watcher mageling, but there is no way that I could have been one, or even wanted to be one. I'm American, remember? Watchers only accepted people from British families, and only if they'd been around for a few centuries. You taught me that. I wouldn't have even known that they existed. I think you're right about me being some sort of academic that worked with some type of history though."

"There are enough colleges around New York that it would have been easy to grab someone from there, and it also makes sense with the ritual. Janus prefers that his sacrifices are of the extremely orderly type, and teachers do tend to be very orderly," Dawn said, forgiving Jack his first reaction.

"Not too orderly I hope," Jack told her, finally giving in to Black amusement. "I wouldn't want you to think that I couldn't handle your life and I know that's more than a bit crazy." He tucked a strand of her hair back and leaned down for his own kiss.

"Don't worry. We've been known to corrupt the most stodgy of Watchers. You'll adapt pretty easy," Dawn smirked, before accepting his offer.


	8. Chapter 8

It hadn't taken Dawn any time at all to find out who Jack had been. While there were quite a few colleges in New York City, having the date and an occupation made searching through the missing persons reports in the police department's database very simple. Once she had the police report, tracking down his family was even simpler. It was deciding what to do about it that was hard.

Brian Miller was still searching for his little brother David. That made her decision a little more difficult. Dawn had done her time informing parents of newly Called slayers about the truth of the supernatural, but Brian wasn't responsible for a thirteen year old girl who was now in the line of fire, regardless of what anyone wanted for her. She wasn't sure that she had the right to completely turn his world on its head. On the other hand, the man was still searching after thirty years and really did deserve some kind of closure.

In the end it came down to free choice, something that all of the Scoobies were big on. Brian was the only one who could tell her whether or not finding out what happened to his brother was worth it. So Dawn dressed in her best Watcherly fashion business outfit and opened a portal to New York City. If there was one type of magic that came naturally to Dawn it was portals and she was able to open the other end at precisely the place that she had intended; the alley two blocks from Brian Miller's home.

Dawn walked up to the modest house and knocked on the screen door. "Yes?" a man asked, opening the main door to the house.

"Brian Miller?" When the man nodded Dawn continued. "My name is Dawn Summers and I have some information on your brother David."

"You're a little young to be a detective miss," the man said. Brian had Jack's hazel eyes and dark hair, and probably could have been mistaken for his father. He also wasn't about to take her word for it, which was smart as far as Dawn was concerned.

Dawn pulled a picture out of her book bag and showed it to Brian. It was a picture of Black Jack at the club, one that showed Jack's face fully, rather than hiding in the shadows the way they generally preferred. "I've been working on this from the other end, sir."

"OH MY GOD!" Brian said. He opened the screen door and pulled her inside. "Where is he? How is he? Why didn't he come home?" He guided her over to the living room couch where a much younger woman sat reading. "Sam, this is Dawn Summers. She found your uncle David. Dawn, this is my daughter Samantha."

At the skeptical look on the woman's face, Dawn handed her the picture. "He's alive, he's fine and he doesn't know I'm here," she told them. She sat down on the couch. "Thirty years ago he woke up with traumatic amnesia. He will never regain the memories of the life he had up to that point. Now, I know that this is a very impertinent question, but I need to know if having nightmares for the rest of your lives is worth it to you for you to know where he is and what's happened to him."

"Nightmares be damned, I need to know," Brian said.

"Our family has always been very close. When Uncle David went missing we were all devastated," Sam told her.

Dawn nodded. She wasn't sure whether to be relieved or not. "The first thing you need to know is that magic is real." Before they could begin to protest and call her insane, she called her magic and levitated both of them off of the couch. Once they were done freaking out over the fact that they were floating in midair, she set them back down.

"Ok," Brian said shakily. "Why do we need to know that?"

"Because your brother was the victim of a botched chaos spell," Dawn said. "The spell was intended to do a lot of damage to the New York area, if not the entire world. A young woman named Nikki Wood stopped the spell, but not in time to save him from the effects of it."

"How bad are these effects?" Sam asked.

"Well, you already know about the amnesia. The other thing you need to know is that he now shares his body with another person. They've taken the name Black Jack as neither of them remember who they were before they woke up after the ritual," Dawn began.

"Are you talking about multiple personalities?" Brian asked. He looked a bit horrified at the idea.

"They have a physical case, not a mental one," Dawn tried to reassure them. "They were two physically separate people who got sort of smooshed together by the spell. They're kind of like mystically conjoined twins now, only they share the same body space."

"How would that damage New York?" Sam asked, as her father struggled with the concept.

"The original intent of the spell was for a supernatural creature to possess the spell caster and this creature would be the one to do the damage that the spell caster wanted once it had a host. Between the fact that the spell wasn't done properly because the caster had a bad copy of the ritual and that the ritual was interrupted by someone whose job it is to stop such things, the spell caster's place in the spell and Jack, who was supposed to be the sacrificial victim, were switched; as was Black and the creature the spell caster was aiming for," Dawn said.

"There are people who actually have stopping this sort of thing as a job?" Brian asked.

"Yes, I'm one of them, or rather I will be once I finish my schooling," Dawn said. "We're basically similar to a policing force, only for supernatural entities instead of humans."

"If this spell was designed to put a supernatural creature inside a person, does this mean that this Black is a supernatural creature as well?" Sam asked.

"Yes he is," Dawn said, not wanting to spook them too badly right off the bat.

"Oh this is crazy," Brian said, rubbing his face with his hands.

"If you want to stop here, that's fine. Black Jack doesn't know that I've found you and you can stop looking now that you know that he's alright," Dawn offered.

"No," Brian immediately rejected her offer. "No, even if he never remembers me, he's my brother. It doesn't matter who he is now or what he's become."

Sam nodded in agreement. "He's family, and I guess Black is too, whatever he is."

"You two seem awfully sure of this," Dawn said, a bit skeptically.

Brian leaned forward, his face sagging in grief. "My wife, my son, his wife and kids, my sister and her family and my mother were on their way out here to New York for Christmas last year when the van they were in was involved in a multivehicle accident. There were no survivors. Getting any member of our family back is worth any price we have to pay."

"So what is he?" Sam asked.

"Black is a vampire. He doesn't kill people anymore because it makes Jack sick, but he does still need blood to survive," Dawn explained.

"Vampires are real?" Sam asked.

Dawn nodded. "Vampires, werewolves, and lots of other things that you probably don't want to know about."

"How do they get blood for Black; blood banks?" Brian asked.

"No they well, let's put it this way – they get women to volunteer to get bitten," Dawn said. She wanted to squirm a bit, but she was supposed to be the Watcher right now and they didn't shirk from their duties. This was her duty, one she volunteered for, but her duty nonetheless. Honestly, it wasn't like it really bothered her either. She just really didn't want to have to come out and say that Black slept with women just so that he could feed on their blood.

Brian and Sam looked at each other, and then Sam looked at the picture she still held. "Well, I guess that wouldn't be too hard. Objectively speaking, he's very handsome," she said.

Brian shook his head. "David was what you'd call a nerd these days, I think anyway." He looked at the picture closely. "He hasn't aged a day," he realized.

"No he hasn't. Jack shares Black's immortality because of how they were merged," Dawn told them. "Is there anything else you'd like to know?"

"Where is he? What's he been doing for the last thirty years?" Brian offered a little helplessly.

"Black Jack owns a nightclub in Cleveland called Jerico. It's a mixed club, supernatural and human, that's kind of neutral territory. As long as no one causes trouble, everyone has a place to go get a drink, etc. Cleveland is a supernatural hot spot, so there's lots of live and let live types as well as the more lethal ones that my group tries to keep under control," Dawn said. "The guys try to keep on that side of the line even if Black needs violence as much as he needs blood."

"What sort of violence?" Brian asked, worried about his little brother dealing with this creature for all these years.

"Nothing more than a good barroom brawl," Dawn reassured him. She pulled her book bag into her lap and took out a small book of photographs. Inside was Black Jack's contact information as well as several pictures of both the man and the vampire. "I made this in case you were interested in getting to know both of them." She handed it over along with her card. "If you have any further questions for me, you can call me at this number." With that, she stood up and portalled away.

"You went and found Jack's family without telling us, and then you told them what had happened to us thirty years ago?" Black hissed. They were leaning on their balcony, watching the bar and dance floor, but the knuckles that showed because of the fingerless gloves were white. Dawn stood next to them, and she was a bit worried that the railing would break under the pressure.

"The two of you wanted me to find out who you had been. I went and talked to them only because they were the only ones who could say whether or not learning the truth was worth the nightmares it would bring. As it was I barely gave them the basics and then gave them some pictures of the two of you and a couple of phone numbers. Here's the phone for the number I gave them for you. If they call and you want to talk, fine. If you don't want to talk, fine - don't answer. They're the only ones with the number," Dawn told them.

"What if they don't call?" Jack asked, and Dawn's heart broke a little at the pain in his voice.

"I think that they will, 95 percent anyway. The reason that I went to them first is because I didn't want to get Jack's hopes up. They could have been totally unaccepting of the real world. If that had been the case I would have told them that the man they were still looking for had died on that altar," Dawn said.

"He did," Jack said. "I have no memories before that night, and I won't ever be able to get them back either."

"They know," Dawn said, and pulled out two folders out of her book bag. "This is what I've told them about the two of you." She showed them one folder. The paper inside had a list with one line underlined. "They know everything above that line. The other folder has two sections in it. The first has everything I could find on David Miller, which is what Jack's name was before that night. The second has everything I could find on the Miller family."

Jack took the folders from her, his hand shaking slightly. "I wanted everyone to make as fully an informed choice as possible," she told them. "It was the only way that I could be fair to everyone."

"What about Black?" he asked.

"The nest of Ul'thur's line that lived in New York was completely destroyed by Nikki Wood. As far as I could find out Black was a childer under ten years old because there was only one master vamp in that nest and it wasn't him," Dawn said quietly.

Jack sighed. She really had done as they'd asked, and he couldn't fault her reasoning for contacting his family first. "I hope that you're right, mageling."


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: I happen to belong to one of the very few who believe that Spike/Buffy was something that never should have happened because there was someone better out there for him, namely Joyce. So, since this is my fanfic – it never did and it was Joyce that Spike did everything for. He fell in love with her when she comforted him after he'd lost Drusilla, and it didn't hurt that the first time they met she hit him over the head with an axe. Violence is the way to a vampire's heart. Lol He went after his soul for the purpose of finding redemption so that he could one day join her in heaven. It was to her that he made the promise of taking care of her daughters, including Buffy who he really wasn't all that fond of, when she got sick.

One more thing – thanks to Nightmare, I now know that Spike's chip was removed in The Killer In Me. For the purposes of this story, it is still there and functional.

POV: Spike

Spike, William the Bloody, childer of Drusilla and Angelus, one of the four Scourge of Europe and the only vampire to have ever killed two slayers, was not happy. He'd been in Cleveland for three days now, and he'd discovered something that, for the first time, made him wish that he hadn't gone after and obtained his soul.

A vampire, a bloody youngling who hadn't even seen his first century yet, was dating his Niblet. He'd overheard Glenda and Red talking about it. Vampires did not date, period. They stalked their chosen partners, especially if the human was going to be more than a quick shag. This pillock might be stalking Dawn using the dates, but that wasn't very likely especially since he was a young one. That took subtlety and training, which a fledge really hadn't had time to have learned.

The very idea that some sodding wanker of a vamp was panting after Joyce's baby girl was enough to make him furious, but for one to treat her like a plaything that wasn't even worth considering as a Consort was enough to make him contemplate doing all of the things Angelus had taught him about torturing humans and vampires. He'd even gone down to the railroad yard to pick up a few railroad spikes just for old time's sake. It wouldn't kill the poxy prat, but it would hurt a lot and the bloody nonce deserved every bit of pain Spike could inflict before he killed him. No one treated his Bit that way and got away with it.

Spike had first made certain that the Watcher, (Giles, because as far as he was concerned there weren't any others, not even young Wesley) had little Dawn busy with some sort of research that would take all night. He did not want Dawn to see what he was going to do. Then he filled his pockets with a few items and took off for the club that one of the young slayers had said that the vampire Black Jack owned.

POV: Sam

David Miller had been her favorite of all the adults that Samantha Miller had known when he had gone missing shortly before her sixth birthday. He had been the one to teach her how to read, had taught her that there was more than one language, and that there were wonderful stories in all of them. He had read her The Odyssey and Beowulf, Romeo and Juliet, and the original Brothers Grimm. He had opened her eyes to the world of literature before her peers could turn her against it, and now that he had been found, he was teaching her about the reality behind many of the tales she had studied.

Contacting Black Jack (and the new name was going to take some getting used to, but in many cultures people took on new names when life changing events happened to them, and personally she really couldn't think of anything more life changing than what had happened to him) had never been in question, for either her or her father. They had been thrilled to discover that he (or was it they, she really wasn't sure just about how to refer to her uncle now, much less his mystically conjoined vampire twin) was cautiously in favor of getting to know them as well. Sam and her father had both taken vacation and sick days from their jobs, (Sam at the university where her Uncle David had once worked, and her father from the American Museum of Natural History) and they had immediately driven straight through to Cleveland.

Meeting Jack at his club just after it had opened had been a bit nerve wracking for all of them, but soon Jack was showing them all around supernatural Cleveland. There were demonic bookstores where Sam had seen tomes that her history department chair would have killed for and manuscripts that various members of the literature department would have done the same. She'd opened an account at Glimaok's shop and made a first purchase just so that her boss would forgive her for taking time off right in the middle of the semester. They'd driven past the slayer school where Jack had told them that most of the demon hunters and mages in Cleveland were trained. Finding out that Sineya's Daughter was not only not a myth, but that because of recent events there were about 1000 Chosen Daughters worldwide at the moment and that they were anywhere from 13 to nearly 60 years old had blown her mind. There were a dozen more stops and while intellectually Sam knew that Jack was keeping them to the 'live and let live' part of town as Miss Summers had put it, but it didn't really hit home until they were returning to his club.

They were about to enter the back door of the club when a man with slicked back, bleached blond hair and a black leather trench coat called out, "Black Jack!" Jack turned, and for the first time Sam could see the switch, the change, that Miss Summers had talked about. One moment he was the uncle she was getting reacquainted with, and the next he had yellow eyes, fangs, and a feeling of danger swept over her. This wasn't her Uncle Jack. This was Black, the vampire that he had become merged with. She'd seen the pictures that Miss Summers had left with them of course, but while they had shown her what Black looked like, they really hadn't prepared her for the reality of seeing him for the first time.

Then for some reason the demon, (his face had warped from a normal looking human into something that looked similar to Black so she guessed that he was what a vampire looked like normally) slugged Black across the jaw. The next three blows came in rapid succession, as the blond vampire snarled about respect and a bit of some kind, or perhaps a bit of respect, Sam wasn't sure. Black was knocked to the ground, and as she and her dad started forward to pick him up, Jack took over and launched his own punch. "Don't you pick on my brother!" he yelled.

At the same time the stranger pulled what looked like a metal shank out of his pocket and stabbed Jack in the shoulder. Then for some reason both of them fell to the ground screaming in pain. Well, the reason for Jack's screams was obvious. The blond however, looked like he was having a seizure, and was grabbing at his head before he finally passed out.

POV: Black and Jack

Black recognized that the vamp assaulting him was a master, and one well beyond his fledge years, which made it very difficult for him to fight back as he hadn't even reached his fiftieth year yet. Among vampires age and mastership meant seniority, and whatever a higher ranked vampire wanted, he usually got.

What he didn't know was what they'd done to piss him off; at least he didn't know until Jack took over in order to defend him against the beating. The description their mageling had given them of both his physical appearance and of the effects of the Initiative's behavior modification chips matched the master vamp's reactions far too closely for him to be anyone other than William the Bloody. He'd set the chip off when he'd slammed that railroad spike into Jack's, rather than Black's, shoulder as Jack was still very much a human. Apparently he didn't like the way they'd been treating Dawn.

"Shit, that hurts! Suddenly 'the shovel speech' sounds a lot more intimidating," Jack said as he stood up, clutching his shoulder and holding the spike in place.

"What do you mean?" Brian asked as he and his daughter helped Jack up.

"We need to get you to a hospital or something," Samantha said. "How are we going to explain this? Is there a doctor in town that knows about the supernatural?"

Jack shook his head. "Don't worry about it. One of the nicer perks I've gotten from Black is the ability to heal rather quickly. I'm not as fast as a slayer, but I won't need a hospital, just patching up because the wound isn't that deep. I'll be fine in a couple of days. As for William the Bloody, apparently he's pissed off at us because he thinks we're not treating our girlfriend very well." He turned his head, not noticing the glance that his brother and niece shared, and bellowed, "Kranoth!"

The back door to the club opened and a greyish head stuck out. Black was pleased at Kranoth's quick response. Normally rock type demons tended to be rather slow and dumb, hence their request to the Senior Slayers that their girls not bully the bouncers. Kranoth was proving to be the exception to that rule. "Bring the vampire and follow me," Jack ordered. He then nodded Brian and Samantha on ahead of him. The two humans entered, although not without a great deal of looking back at Jack, Kranoth and the unconscious Spike.

When they were all in Black Jack's combination living room and kitchen, and Kranoth had left after depositing Spike on the couch, Jack tried to answer Brian's question a little better as he gathered up some medical supplies. He couldn't let Black do it because if they switched out before the spike was removed, Black would become injured as well.

"William the Bloody, also known as Spike due to his favorite weapons," Jack pointed at his shoulder, "is a master vampire over one hundred years old. Being a master means that he is not stupid, he's one of the top dogs of the vampire world so to speak, and he's likely to live at least a couple of centuries more. That is, he would have had all of that if three things hadn't happened. First, he allied with his natural enemy, a slayer, against his grandsire, (a sire is the vampire who creates a new vampire, and grandsire is the sire of a sire) in order to save his sire's unlife and the world, pretty much in that order.

"Second, he got caught by a bunch of military backed scientists who were having fun playing 'let's torture the demon and try to make the perfect soldier'. You can imagine how well that worked. Spike has a behavior modification chip inside his head that creates a great deal of pain whenever he harms a human which is why he's out cold right now. I'm still very human even though I'm merged with Black, so hitting me with the railroad spike set off the chip.

"The third is that he fell in love with our mageling's mother. About a year and a half after she died unexpectedly from an aneurism, (and I suspect before he could make her his Consort) he left her daughters in the care of the Scooby gang and went off to earn the return of his soul, so that after he gains redemption for the evil things that he's done over the last one hundred and however many years, he can die and be reunited with her in heaven. Mageling thinks it's terribly romantic, even if it does cause him a lot of pain she doesn't want him to be in."

"And Mageling is your girlfriend?" Brian asked.

"Actually I did offer, but Joyce said it was too soon after her divorce from Niblet's and the Slayer's father to consider becoming my Consort. She didn't think that she'd die," Spike said sadly, as he sat up. He hadn't been unconscious long.

"Don't tell us anything more about Dawn's family. We promised her that we'd ignore anything that might tell us who she is because she wants to be just Dawn for a while," Jack told Spike. He pulled the spike out of his shoulder, hissing in pain and quickly shed Black's coat, hat and his shirt. Fortunately he wasn't wearing more than a single button down shirt. A T-shirt would have been nearly unbearable to remove.

Spike nodded in understanding. "Yeah, being in that family has made life a bit hard on her, but you're still not treating her right!" he growled.

"Dawn? The girl who came to talk to us Dawn?" Brian asked, a bit incredulously.

Patching the small puncture wound didn't take a lot of concentration so Jack was able to answer Brian as he worked on it. "Yes, that's our mageling. Deal with it," he snapped. He turned to Spike. "We are treating her right. It's not fair to Black that I can marry her now while he can't Claim her because she's too young at eighteen to become a Consort. We have to wait until she's at least 23 before he can start stalking her and she already knows that it's my fault he hasn't already started because I won't be a part of it if she's too young. Our condition forces us to cooperate with each other. The consequences if we do not are far more devastating than we like to think about."

Spike settled back into the couch. Jack thought that he was rather satisfied with their answer by the look on his face. "Right answer boy. She's far too precious for the likes of you to play with."

"Why date her if she's too young for the both of you?" Samantha asked.

Unlike Brian's look of surprise and a bit of distaste, Jack could only see confusion and an urge to learn in Samantha's face. "She's beyond special, Samantha. You see, in all the years that we've been merged, not one person has ever been more sorry for Black than for me when they've figured out that we aren't crazy. Honestly most are horrified on my account and tend to put Black down for being simply what he is, rather than who he is as they never take the time to get to know him. It startled us. I was ready to put her in the not to be touched category when Black reminded me that six years, six months of which have already gone by now since we met her, isn't that long to wait for her to grow up enough to be ready for us to Claim her."

Jack didn't think that any of them needed to know that Black had already talked him into knocking two years off of their wait time. They both loved her so much that they didn't want to wait, but Jack refused to curse Dawn with being a teenager for eternity. "You see, a vampire's consort shares their immortality."

POV: Brian

The first thing that sprung to Brian's mind when his little brother had told them that he was dating a teenager was that this vampire he was stuck with had turned his baby brother into a pervert, but it was Jack's final words to Samantha stopped his reactions in their tracks. "You see, a vampire's consort shares their immortality."

THAT little piece of information put an entirely new spin on things. Jack was immortal because Black was, and if this consort thing would do the same for Dawn, then old enough became something entirely different than just Black looking for a regular supply of blood. To be stuck as a teenager for eternity was something he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy, much less his soon-to-be sister-in-law. Jack was right to make them wait until Dawn was old enough to not look like they were robbing the cradle for eternity.

Then, as he went back over Jack's explanation to Sam about why he was dating Dawn, Brian began to understand that both Black and Jack had found that once in a lifetime, or longer considering how long vampires could live, person for them and that they simply weren't about to let a little thing like her age get in the way of making sure that she knew just how important she was to them both. They weren't talking about just loving and leaving the girl, they had every intention of marrying her when she was old enough.

He was also trying very hard to ignore the scars that covered Jack's chest. If he thought about those for too long, he was going to be sick. Someone had carved those into Jack's chest in order to cause death and destruction for who knew how many other people, starting with his baby brother. He was extremely glad that Jack had told them that the mage responsible for the botched chaos spell had died the night it had been cast.

Actually, now that he was thinking about it; that was another good reason for Jack to be dating Dawn. The scars that covered his brother's wrists were matched by similar scars on hers. He hadn't noticed Jack's before because of the gloves Jack had been wearing, but the scars that Brian had seen on Dawn's wrists had been a warning about just how dangerous her job was, and if her sister was a slayer like the ones at the school they'd seen earlier that day, it was no wonder she was involved in that job even before she'd finished school.

"So why is stalking a good thing?" Brian asked Spike.

"Among vampires, stalking is the first step in making a Claim on a human, either making them a Consort or a childer," Spike told him. He turned a glare on Jack who had just finished up cleaning up the medical mess that he'd made. "No one is going to turn my Niblet. You even think about it and I'll get Glenda and Red to hide you so far inside your brother I'll be able to kill him without setting off this blasted chip – and if they can't, there is always the Order of Taraka."

"We love her far too much to do something so stupid," Jack said plainly. He walked over to a mirror hanging on the wall. "Reveal!" he ordered, before stepping back and letting Black take over.

Black turned to see his guests staring in shock at Jack in the mirror. "We don't like magic all that much, but this one is a handy little spell," he said with a chuckle. He knew that he had a very sarcastic sense of humor, and that people in general could amuse him to no end with the stupid things they got themselves into, but being able to startle someone fed a starved part of his demon heart. It really was too bad that Jack was such a white hat. They would have made a great team for evil otherwise.

Predictably it was Spike who recovered first. "You're right, that is a handy piece of mojo. What I want to know is why aren't you wearing his bandage? 'Cause one of the funniest things I saw when dealing with Glory was Ben stuck in one of her skanky outfits." Spike's tone was amused, but to those able to hear it, there was also the unmistakable command of a sire to a fledge that said he'd better offer up the explanation or be prepared to face the consequences.

"We're joined, merged, not just trading body space. We are both aware of what is happening to the other at all times. Our bodies are joined internally through mystical means. The scars are what bind us together, so they appear on both of our bodies. When we switch places, only our outerwear is unable to travel with us to wherever it is we go when the other is in control," Black said.

"And you'd better not start calling us Glory guy!" Jack snapped at Spike. "We are NOT a hellgoddess!"

Spike laughed. "You had a run in with the Scoobies, did you?"

"We turned the Red Witch green," Black smirked.

"We've met with the Senior Slayers, the White Knight, the Red Witch, and the Earth Mother," Jack offered. "Only the Red Witch and the Earth Mother are aware that we're dating our mageling."

"Oi! How could you not know who her family is? You had to have smelled it on her!" Spike wanted to know.

"Of course we did," Black told him. "But like Jack told you, we're ignoring it as much as possible because that's what she wants. When she's ready to have us help her with saving the world, then we'll be told officially."

Brian had no idea what that was all about, and the whole mystical conjoined twin thing hadn't made any more sense to him after he'd watched the two of them switch in and out than it had the first time he'd heard it. The one thing that he did understand was that evil and soulless creatures of the night or not, Spike and Black were very much in love with their respective ladies, and as long as Jack was able to have that in his life, even if he had to share the girl with Black, Brian was more than happy for him. "So tell us about this mageling of yours," he requested.


	10. Chapter 10

The Slayer School

"The one slayer or potential, one Watcher standard was much easier for the old council to maintain as they had an abundance of Watchers and there were only a few hundred potential slayers under the age of eighteen. They didn't bother with any potential who had lived beyond the Calling age, in fact no one in the supernatural world did which is why we have so many slayers now," Dawn told Brian and Sam as she gave them a guided tour of the slayer school.

"It was however, the one thing that they got right when it came to actually dealing with slayers. Slayers deal best with a Watcher of their own. Even if that Watcher is as much a student of the supernatural as they are, the slayer is still as much as fifty percent less likely to be killed or badly injured than a slayer without a Watcher. We're recruiting like mad anyone who qualifies."

"Which is where Sam comes in," Brian said, amused.

"Don't count yourself out," Dawn told him. "You can read Latin and Ancient Greek thanks to helping your little brother study. Even if you are rusty and can't throw a punch, we still need you." She nodded at the classroom full of baby slayers that they were passing. "They need you. Researching the demons is half the job. We can get martial arts and combat instructors for any style practically anywhere; someone who can read the research texts we have and who can handle the supernatural – not so much."

"William the Bloody said that your sister is a slayer?" Brian asked, a little unnerved at the idea that Dawn was trying to recruit him as well as his daughter as Watchers.

"When did you meet Spike?" Dawn asked, frowning.

"He ah, stopped in to have a talk with Black Jack last night just as we were getting back to the club," Sam said.

"A talk," said Dawn in disbelief; then shook her head. She'd deal with whatever mayhem Spike had inflicted upon them later. "Actually my sister is Buffy Summers. She's the last slayer who was 'the one girl in all the world' as the old speech went. After she died the first time two more slayers were Called by the old system. Kendra was Called first and when she died a year later Faith was Called. Buffy and Faith are now the senior slayers."

"When she died for the first time?" Sam and Brian chorused.

Dawn shrugged. "She's been dead twice. The first time she drowned at the hands of the Master, a very old vampire who wanted to open the Sunnydale hellmouth and was revived by CPR. The second time she died in my place to keep every bit of reality in every dimension from being ripped apart by a crazy hellgoddess."

She stopped when she saw their stares. "I was the sacrificial victim, but the good news was that eventually, what with it causing one disaster after another it eventually led to this." She waved her hands around, indicating the school. "No slayer will ever have to fight to save the world by herself ever again. She'll have a good Watcher at her back and her sister slayers at her side," Dawn said with pride.

"No wonder they said you wanted to be just Dawn for a while," Brian said, shaking his head. "My guess is that you're neck deep in everything that goes on around here."

Dawn nodded. "Pretty much. I've been researching demons since I was fourteen and I got into the fighting side of it after our mom died. I learned a little bit from everyone; fighting skills, ancient languages and how to research the latest big bad, even magic.

"Buffy's been a slayer for ten years. That's longer than any slayer on record. No active slayer has ever made it to her twenty sixth birthday but Buffy's going to be the first in just a couple of months and she's not going to be the last. Every single Scooby is determined to keep her alive as long as possible, including me and knowing that I can help with that helps me live with the fact that she'll still die early no matter what anyone does. It's just that by helping we both put that day off as far as possible and we help her to really live whatever time she ends up having," she said.

"Scooby? Jack said something about Spike leaving you and your sister with the Scooby gang when Spike went to get his soul," Sam said quietly. The sheer horror of what Dawn was telling her felt like a sword thrust through her heart. How could she turn down becoming a Watcher when she knew that Dawn wasn't trying to manipulate her? The way she had said that about her sister, it was far too matter of fact and heart-felt for it to be anything but the honest to god truth. If Sam really could make that much of a difference in one of these young girls' lives…besides, this way she could move to Cleveland and be a part of her uncle's life again.

Dawn laughed, a little sadly and touched at the same time at the reminder that Jack did know who she was, but was pretending he didn't simply because she wanted him to. "My sister was the first slayer who was allowed to have friends, mostly because they refused to leave her alone with her destiny and because they proved to her second Watcher right away that they could help. Xander and Willow met Buffy on her first day at Sunnydale High and were neck deep in stopping a mini apocalypse the very next night."

"Second Watcher?" Brian asked.

"Buffy was what used to be called a lost slayer, one who wasn't identified as a potential slayer until she was actually Called. Merrick was the first Watcher that the old council sent once they found out where and who she was. He died fighting a vampire that Buffy dusted a few nights later. We moved to Sunnydale soon afterwards and the council sent Giles to be her Watcher. He's the best," Dawn grinned. "He's been a sort of dad-like guy for all of the Scoobies ever since.

"Xander was the one who named him, Willow and Buffy the Scooby Gang because they were a bunch of kids solving mysteries and slaying demons. I'm Scrappy because I'm the baby of the family and because I've always been the one who wanted to fight in any way that I could. She's my sister," Dawn explained, and really that said it all. There was no way that she could ever let her sister fight alone, even if she was the only one left who could pick up a stake and watch Buffy's back.

She turned down a hallway and led them back to the parking lot. "Let's get you two back to Jerico. I've got a vampire to set on fire." Brian and Samantha exchanged glances and both could not help but wonder at the fact that their new lives had such things as a teenager happily making a threat to set someone on fire – and that, as long as it wasn't Black she was talking about, they were actually perfectly fine with it.

Dawn really wasn't going to set Spike on fire. She knew that. She was just going to threaten him for giving her boyfriends the shovel speech, and no doubt, scaring a few decades off of Black. She was a Watcher, sister to The Slayer, spawn practice subject for the late ex-vengeance demon Anyanka, and favorite human of Spike himself. She knew what being confronted by an angry Master Vampire over a century old would do to a vamp that had barely made master status; namely send him mentally right back to being a fledge. Spike was going to pay for that. What she didn't expect was to find Spike leaning against a wall, looking like he was trying desperately to not laugh because he'd pass out if he did, and watching Black Jack giggling and trying not to fall off of their couch. "What did you do Spike?"

"Not me Niblet. That is all his breakfast's fault," Spike said, finally breaking down laughing. "Poor kids are higher than a kite. Weird though, she wasn't high on anything that I could tell."

"She must have had painkillers in her system," Brian sighed. "Jack's a real lightweight when it comes to painkillers. He can't take anything stronger than a couple of Advil without reacting like that."

"Then why is Black having problems?" Spike asked. "I thought he had his own body."

"He does but they share a stomach, and because Black's a vampire his body is a reflection of Jack's so he has some of Jack's weaknesses. You should know that better than anyone. You have William's eyesight problems," Dawn said, as she walked over and levered Black Jack off the couch. He practically fell onto her shoulders, still giggling.

"Yeah, yeah, I can't read without switching to game face," Spike said, with a shrug. There was no way in hell he was ever wearing glasses again.

"That's why they sometimes say that they share the same body isn't it?" Brian asked.

"Yeppers," Dawn said, half carrying Jack over to the door to the bedroom. "I'll see you guys later, and Spike," she glared over the shoulder not holding up a blitzed boyfriend, "we'll be talking later and if you're not careful you'll end up on fire."

Spike grinned at the mild death threat. "That's my girl," he said.

"Ok Jack," Dawn said as she helped him lower himself onto the bed. "We're here."

"You're very, very beautiful," Jack told her. He'd sprawled out on the bed, and was now trying to tug her down with him.

"And you are very stoned," Dawn laughed softly. She let him pull her down and cuddle her like a teddy bear.

"You smell good too…like green," Black said, and nuzzled her throat.

"That's my magic," she said patiently. 'Wait a minute, magic.' "Let Black take a drink Jack," she told him as they had switched again. Neither one of them seemed able to stay in control at the moment; maybe her magic filled blood would help sober them up.

"Nope," he said firmly, and tried to shake his head. All he succeeded in doing was rubbing his face against her skin and tickling. "We'd Claim you, and we can't do that yet."

"What do you mean claim me?" Dawn asked, thrown by the odd word. Somehow she didn't think that he was using the wrong word because he was high.

Jack kept on talking like he hadn't heard her. "It's not fair to Black that I can marry you. So we're not gonna do that. We're gonna be good and we're gonna wait."

Dawn's mind raced and put the two words together and came up with something that she'd never thought she'd ever get to see, much less be a part of now that her mother was gone. "You want to make me your Consort?" she asked Black.

Black grinned. "My Consort, his wife, our mageling," he muttered as he tried to look up at her.

Dawn's breath caught in her chest. She'd read about Vampire's Consorts before in some of the Watcher's journals. It was a very rare thing when a vampire fell in love. Generally speaking most of them weren't capable of it. Spike was the one who had taught her that it really was possible. He'd loved his sire for over a century, and their relationship had only ended when she'd left him. Then Dawn had watched him fall in love with her mother. It was even rarer when that vampire fell in love with a human, but it did happen often enough that there was a way to deal with the situation. She'd looked that information up when she'd realized just how much Spike and her mother had loved each other.

A Consort was bound to their vampire mate by a special bite and a small blood exchange. This allowed the Consort to share in the vampire's abilities; making them stronger, less prone to illness, and most importantly shared the vampire's immortality. The Consort would not age past the time of the Claim. Suddenly Dawn was very grateful that Jack was putting the brakes on Black. The vampire wouldn't care if she was eighteen forever, but she really didn't care for that idea. As for the rest of what being immortal implied, well the Key probably was already and she'd rather be a human Key than a green blob of magical energy anyway. That added to the fact that she was falling for these two men very fast meant that she'd probably accept when the time came, but she'd have to let them know about the Key first.

"Thank you for waiting for me," Dawn said and gave Jack a kiss. "Now let's get you out of that shirt." Jack ended up fighting her because every time she touched his skin he burst out in giggles; apparently he was ticklish. Dawn noted that for later use, and simply continued to wrangle Jack out of his clothes so she could get him to go back to bed and sleep it off.

That was going fairly well until she saw the bandage on Jack's shoulder. Dawn took a small step and found the obvious conclusion. "Jack, what did Spike do to you?" she asked as calmly as she could through gritted teeth. Waking up on fire was too good for him.

"Would you really set him on fire when he's sleeping?" Jack asked, grinning at the thought.

"A vague disclaimer is no one's friend. Damned right I would. Now what happened?" Dawn demanded to know.

Jack snickered. "He was disciplining Black for not treating you right when I took over and told him to stop picking on my brother. He didn't know about me and paid for it. I'm human enough to set off his chip. After he woke up and we explained what was going on, he adopted Black. You were right, for a vampire he's really a nice guy."

Dawn sighed. Now she couldn't kill Spike. He'd gone and done something completely against his demon's nature for her sake, and given Black something that he desperately needed - a sire. Vampires need that connection when they're young, and Black hadn't had it since before the botched chaos spell that merged him with Jack. "Yeah he is. It's a good thing that more people don't know that. He does have a reputation to maintain in the demonic world. It'd be totally ruined if people knew what a marshmallow he can be for the people he cares about. I mean, he even looks out for my sister and they couldn't stand each other at all when he first got together with my mom…and you have finally passed out."

Dawn got up off the bed and finished tucking Jack in. "Just because I can't kill him now doesn't mean that maiming is off the list," she reminded herself cheerfully and checked the short sword under her jacket.


	11. Chapter 11

Black Hat 11

"I still can't believe that you did that," laughed Jack, as he held the door to Glimaok's shop open for Dawn.

"I've warned Spike before about what I would do if he pissed me off," Dawn said casually, more interested in Giles' wish list than Jack's admiring complaints about her revenge. "He was lucky all I did was pin him to the wall with my short sword and he knows it."

"Don't you mean you pinned him to the wall with a magicked short sword? Thanks to you, we were the only ones who could pull that sword out of the wall, and that had to wait until we'd slept off whatever painkiller that girl was using," Black said pointedly. Once they were in the shop itself he didn't have to worry about sunlight. Glimaok's shop used magical filters on all of its windows to protect the customers from unwanted sunlight. Vampires weren't the only ones who disliked sunlight in the demonic world, just the most obvious.

"Actually the two of you or any of the Scoobies can use my sword, and it was Willow who did the spell work on it. She's put the same spell on all of the Scoobies' and her more advanced students' favorite weapons," Dawn told them. She led them to the back of the shop where the supernatural community had a more private room, and once there to the recent acquisitions section.

"So if those weapons are lost in a fight they can't be used against their owners?" Jack guessed. Dawn smiled as brightly as her name, and he couldn't resist stealing a kiss.

"Right, of course we also want to make sure that an ally can use them, so Willow adds certain people to the short list," Dawn said approvingly. Even the most innocent of conversations had become an excuse for flirting lately, even more so now that she knew how serious they were about her.

Their conversation, not exactly normal even in this shop, attracted some attention from the other customers. Most, seeing the flirting couple, dismissed their conversation as either a conversation about a role play, (the humans who didn't know about the supernatural world who had only heard the first part), or as a conversation between a slayer and her young Watcher. The two who did not were the only actual Slayer and Watcher team in the store – Faith and Wesley. "Faith," Wesley murmured, loud enough only for his Slayer to hear. "Who is that?" The question was a bit of a code that the two of them used between themselves. He was actually asking her if the man was human, and if not, did she know what sort of demon he was.

Faith smiled. "It's five by five, that's little D's guy."

"Oh, is he?" Wesley asked, fearing but really he knew what Faith's response would be.

"Oh yeah," Faith said. "She's got her mom and big sis's taste in guys. How all three of them managed to find a guy willing to work with us in that crowd is beyond me."

"Quite," Wesley agreed with a shake of his head. "That's Jack, I take it?" 

"Yeah, he's hot too; if you don't mind a hell of a lot of scars," Faith said, wrinkling her nose a bit. Normally Faith didn't mind scars, but Black Jack's were the worst she'd ever seen.

"Hard to avoid them in our line of work," Wesley pointed out as he touched the scar that ran across his throat. He relaxed at learning the vampire's identity. Dawn and Willow had both checked to see if this one could get loose. Dawn was safe from that at least. "I hope that you're keeping an eye on her though. If he is merely using her for the opportunity she represents…." he trailed off. It had happened before, and not with welcome results.

"Don't worry, I've got that one covered," Faith smirked. "No ass wipe is going to lay one hand on her without getting up close and personal with my fists. Then I'll let B have what's left."

"How very generous of you," Wesley smirked. It was no accident that Xander Harris had taken to calling them 'Team Darkside'. There was a part of Wesley, one that he tried to keep buried, that matched Faith's darkness. Should they so choose, there would be very little left to hand over to Buffy once they were done explaining to the vampire and his human brother where they'd made their mistake.

"Come on, we've got some threats to deliver if they're playing tonsil hockey in public," Faith said.

"I know why we have to wait. I just don't want to," Black was telling Dawn as Faith and Wes walked across the store and up behind them.

"You can start stalking me in two years," Dawn soothed as she reached for another dusty tome. "You can even ask Spike how to draw it out three years. He's even more impatient than you are, but he's got good ideas. Plus, Angel's a master at the art and as your grandsire, you can ask him too. They'll make sure that you know how to do everything properly since your first sire can't." She was leaning back in his arms while she glanced through the book she held. She could feel Jack take over, something that she set aside to ponder later, as he groaned into her shoulder.

"You would remember that out of everything we babbled at you," Jack mumbled. They'd both been more careful in checking Black's meals for drugs ever since they'd sobered up and found Spike stuck to their living room wall three days ago.

"You were both very sweet, higher than a couple of satellites, but very sweet," Dawn said as she checked the book against Giles' wish list. They'd been lucky in finding an ancient card catalog of the former Watchers Council library in one of the old manor homes that had belonged to a Watcher family. The manor had been left to an American cousin from a branch of the family that had turned to demon hunting about the time of the American Revolution. When the new owner had stumbled across the catalog she'd sent it to Giles right away knowing how important it was. Her oldest daughter was a slayer. "This one is on Giles' list, but I'm not seeing anything referring to the next couple of months." She put the book in the shopping basket hanging from her arm. That was the hard part about the prophecy business. You never knew just what you were looking for until it was almost right on top of you.

"How about this one?" Jack asked, pulling out a book that was just too far for Dawn to reach. He'd learned to spot Sumerian by now, even if he couldn't read it yet. He and Black had discovered that there were a lot of prophecies written in that language.

Dawn accepted the book, along with another kiss. When she opened the book to read the first page she paused. "Oh Wow! Guys, I think you just found a diary that predates the Watchers Council. If I'm reading this right, this book is a copy of a set of scrolls written by a scribe that traveled with someone that sounds like a slayer."

"Well that is certainly something to investigate," Wesley said, making himself and Faith known.

Dawn winced. "Hey guys," she said. These days Faith could usually be found with her Watcher. Rumor had it that she was avoiding Robin Wood, but no one had the courage to ask. "I'll trade for you not telling my sister," she offered, wiggling the book a little at Wes. As much as he had changed, as the jeans, leather jacket, and the scar across his throat advertised, no Watcher ever lost their love of books.

"Chill out, Dawn Patrol," Faith said, deliberately choosing the nickname Xander had coined for babysitting Buffy's little sister. She wanted Dawn to know that just because she wasn't going to say anything didn't mean that she wasn't going to look out for Dawn. "I already knew, and I haven't blabbed to big sis yet. It's not my place to say you can't go and get your own _bodyguard_." The emphasis and leer that she sent Jack made what she meant perfectly clear. "I thought you two weren't up for a walk on the wild side. 'Cause I gotta tell you, Dawnie might not look like it, but she's just as bad as any slayer," Faith warned.

"Actually, she's worse," Black told the pair. "You slayers don't regularly mess around with magic. It's Dawn herself that makes the risks worth taking." Black stepped aside and let Jack have control. "Even knowing that we have to deal with her family and their tendency towards heroics and the end of the world situations, we still believe that she is worth far more than any changes we have to make in order to be with her in any way that she will allow." Dawn rolled her eyes. Of course Jack would be the one to make a flowery speech. He had probably been one hell of a teacher before becoming a ritual sacrifice.

"If she is harmed in any way because of her association with either of you," Wes threatened softly, looking all the more intimidating for his quiet approach.

"We'll dust off the skills we learned from when we worked for the other side, and then - if you're both very lucky - you'll die before we can hand you over to the rest of the family for their turns," Faith promised.

Dawn broke up the stare down between her boyfriends and the other senior slayer team. "Are you done with the shovel speech? 'Cause we've got more shopping to do."

"Certainly," Wesley said, and quickly took the book out of Dawn's hand. "We'll see you back at the school."

"After we go see that hillbilly demon about the sword repairs," Faith reminded him.

"Kay Cee is its name, Faith," Wesley said, rolling his eyes at his slayer as they moved towards the front, and less demonic/mystical, part of the store. "We're not meeting it until five, but I'm sure that it has done a fine job repairing the baby slayer's swords. It is the smith I gave your paired daggers to after that Bikaprik attack last spring."

"Why would baby slayers need their swords repaired?" Black asked.

"Baby slayers are those who have recently been Called. They tend to be very hard on their equipment between the strength they haven't adjusted to yet and their inexperience in actually using their new weapons," Dawn explained.

"I thought that all slayers became experts in new weaponry within hours of picking something up for the first time," Black said.

"They do," Dawn agreed. "But those first few hours are very hard on the weapons. I knew one slayer who broke seven swords in her first hour of practice. That's why the weapons the babies get are very generic. As they get older and more experienced, there is usually a point where a more personalized weapon becomes an appropriate present, either from one of the Watchers or from a parent."


End file.
